The Light of Pure Reason
by Bixby the Footling Bat
Summary: When Maggie Hill bought an old magnifying glass in London, she didn't expect to bring home the ghost of Sherlock Holmes. Now she's stuck with a sleuth only she can see, a roommate who doubts her sanity, and a detective agency she didn't know she wanted.
1. Prologue: The Best and the Wisest Man

**Hey kids, I'm Bixby! Long-time Sherlockian, first-time fanfiction writer. I mean, I've been writing for a long time, but I've never done anything like this. I was browsing through this excellent section of FFNet, and didn't find any stories of this particular genre, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Hope you like it!**

**Sherlock Holmes belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I'll just borrow him for a while.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Prologue, _or_ The Best and the Wisest Man

London, 1893

Anyone would agree that the Strand was a busy thoroughfare. Since time immemorial, it had been one of London's hubs for the performing arts. It was the location of the Savoy Theatre, the Globe Theatre — not to be confused with Shakespeare's Globe — and the nearby Lyceum Theatre. It also had quite the literary history, as well; it had been a favorite gathering place of such writers as John Stuart Mills, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray, to name a few. And, of course, it boasted one of the most popular restaurants in London. Known far and wide for its roast beef, Simpson's-in-the-Strand could always be depended upon to be full on a Saturday night, even in the middle of winter.

One man in particular on that Saturday night, however, was in no mood for crowds.

He emerged from a hansom in front of the famous restaurant, retrieving his Gladstone bag and handing a few coins to the driver. His movements were slow and uncertain, like a man in a dream. As the two-wheeler clattered away, he stood for a long moment, staring up at the entrance, a haunted look in his faded blue eyes. Finally he sighed to himself, straightened his tie, smoothed his brown mustache, and approached the doors.

The warm, cheerful atmosphere and the sound of easy conversation which welcomed him very nearly made the man turn around and hail the next cab home to Kensington. Unfortunately, this meeting had been his own idea. But it mattered little, for the head waiter recognized him immediately and escorted him straight to his usual corner table. The other chair was already occupied, as it was accustomed to be.

But this person currently seated in it was not its usual occupant; nothing at all like him, the man thought as he rose to shake his hand. _Though not entirely different from me,_ he observed, taking his seat across from him. He was of a stocky build, like himself, and similarly mustachioed, though his companion's was fastidiously waxed into points. Their backgrounds, he knew, were also similar, at least medically speaking. At the moment, he could not have cared less.

"You are looking well, Dr. Watson," the other man said in a Scottish brogue, clearly in an attempt at cordiality.

John Watson tried to conceal a skeptical expression. He was certain he did not, in fact, look well. "And you likewise, Dr. Doyle," he replied with a smile that felt half-hearted even to him.

"I took the liberty of ordering us both a brandy and water," said Doyle. "One must do something to stave off this miserable winter chill."

Watson nodded absently, unable to focus on the other man's words. It was almost as if they did not matter. Nothing seemed to matter anymore.

As the waiter brought their drinks, Doyle leaned back in his chair, languidly lighting a cigar. "I was overjoyed to hear from you again, Doctor," he said confidentially. "I must admit, I was worried that our correspondence had ended with..." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Forgive me. It must still be a difficult thing to speak of."

"There is nothing to forgive, Doyle," Watson answered, staring into his glass. "God knows I have been asked about it enough these two years."

"Nevertheless, I feel compelled to express my condolences." Doyle leaned forward and spoke quietly. "I was also deeply grieved to hear of the passing of your wife, my dear fellow."

As Watson offered his thanks, he could only concentrate on his companion's last three words. There was only one man who had ever addressed him in such a way, and his clear, precise voice echoed unbidden in Watson's mind.

_"My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases..."_

He brought himself back with an effort to the issue at hand. Those days were gone, he told himself, not for the first time; there was no sense in dwelling regretfully over them. It was better certainly to move on... if such a thing were possible.

At any rate, this meeting was not for social reasons, so Watson swiftly moved on to business. "As you know, Doyle," he began, "recent documents have been published which cast a very different and inaccurate light upon the fate of my friend and his arch-nemesis."

Doyle set his glass on the white tablecloth. "I assume you are referring to the letters which Colonel Moriarty has had printed in the _Times_."

"Precisely."

"Rest assured, Watson, that I don't believe a word of that rubbish," he hastened to add. "Others may be blinded by the Colonel's righteous indignation and, alas, I know some who have been, but not I." He shook his head in disgust. "The entire thing is utterly absurd. Imagine, the very idea that Sherlock Holmes, of all people, had been mad!"

There it was. As always, Watson unconsciously stiffened as the name was spoken. It seemed as though nothing would lessen the sense of emptiness in him. So much grief in so short a time, he mused numbly. His wife and his dearest friend, taken from him in under two years. But the loss in itself was not the only source of his pain; it was the concealment that had cut him to the quick.

Holmes had known he was going to die. He was fully prepared for it. His own illustrious life had been a trifle compared to his ultimate goal — a small price to pay for ridding society of the malignant criminal genius of Professor Moriarty. The detective had even dropped hints of his impending demise, but Watson had failed to recognize them for what they were. For that he blamed himself. But the letter from Meiringen, the hoax that had pulled Watson from his friend's side at that crucial moment — for that he blamed Holmes.

Of course, Holmes had not been the orchestrator of that plot to draw the doctor away; it was now obvious it had been Moriarty's doing. But Holmes had allowed Watson to fall for it. He had known quite well that there was no Englishwoman dying of consumption, waiting for Watson at the hotel. And he had let him leave. The one time Watson had let his friend out of his sight on that ill-fated trip, and he had lost him forever.

If he had not been so wracked with grief and self-recrimination, Watson might have noticed that his wife had been quietly slipping from him. But Mary, never thinking of herself, did not dare upset her husband by showing any hint of her illness, knowing he already mourned over the death of his friend — the friend who had brought them together in the first place. When Mary was gone, there was nothing Watson could do but mourn her as well, ashamed of his own feeling that he'd been betrayed by the two people he cared for the most in the world.

John Watson, forever left in the dark.

And now the letters. Those abominable letters with their outrageous allegations, defending the poor, maligned professor and exposing the obsessed detective's madness. The letters which now threatened to destroy the reputation of the most honourable man Watson had ever known. Any shred of resentment he had ever felt toward his friend was now buried under his duty to defend his memory. There was no choice but to set the record straight.

It was for this purpose that Watson had arranged this meeting.

"I had fully intended," he told Doyle, "to end my memoirs with the Adventure of the Naval Treaty. Being the last of Holmes' successful cases in which I shared, it seemed only fitting." The tremor in his voice was almost undetectable. "These blasted letters, however, have forced my pen. I alone know what truly happened. Therefore I have written my own, _true_ account of the events of that black day, as well as those leading up to it. I give it to you, Doyle, to do what you will with it."

He reached into his Gladstone bag beside his chair and, pulling out a slender notebook, he dropped it unceremoniously onto the table before his companion.

Doyle took it uncertainly in his hands. "You wish me to publish it, then?" he asked, leafing through it with obvious curiosity.

"I personally wish I had never been impelled to write it," Watson replied frankly. "But now that the deed is done, I think the public should know the truth." He smiled, unaware of how cheerless it looked. "If not for their sakes, then for Holmes'."

"Say no more, my dear fellow. It shall be so." Doyle took the notebook and stowed it carefully inside his own briefcase. "I must know, Doctor," he resumed, taking another sip of brandy, "now that your... memoirs have drawn to a close, have you any thoughts of turning to fiction? I've no doubt that any future works would be very well-received."

Watson stared across the table at the man sitting in Holmes' chair, drinking his brandy, calling him "_my dear fellow_". It was wrong. All of it was wrong.

He shook his head with a bitter smile. "I'm no writer, Doyle. I never claimed to be anything but an old army surgeon, who occasionally gave Holmes what he magnanimously called 'assistance'. From the very beginning, the only purpose of my fanciful scribblings was to put forth to the public, in my own inadequate way, the amazing intellectual talents and the noble heart of the man who was my greatest friend."

Taking up his drink, he tossed it back in a single swallow and slammed it on the table. "With Holmes gone, there is no longer any reason to continue."

* * *

**I love Watson. Let's get that out of the way right now. I don't just love Watson, I **_**adore**_** him. And the fact that he had to live for three years thinking Holmes was dead... that just breaks my heart. So there's a little insight into the mind of the author. The first **_**real**_** chapter should be up soon, but in the meantime, let me know what you think of the prologue. Cheers!**


	2. One of Those Whimsical Little Incidents

**Wow, thank you for all those lovely reviews! I'm so glad you liked my portrayal of Watson. He's such a sweetie, but usually in the original stories he's kind of just an observer, so it's hard to know what to do with him when he's the main character. But now I feel really bad! Because this story isn't really about Watson; the prologue was just to set it all up. But I do hope you keep reading. I'm pretty darn sure you'll like it, even without the Doc.**

**Any characters you don't recognize are mine, but any you do belong to Doyle.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason 

Chapter One, or One of Those Whimsical Little Incidents

Riding the Eye had seemed like such an awesome idea at the time. It was, after all, the best way to see London, wasn't it? And plus it was totally safe. Everyone said so. You were inside a big glass capsule the whole time, completely protected from the wind and rain and bird crap. What could possibly go wrong?

In the mind of Maggie Hill, everything.

The capsule could detach itself from the enormous overgrown ferris wheel and plunge into the Thames. The entire wheel could come off its axis and roll away, wreaking havoc upon everything in its path. A drunken helicopter pilot could crash into it. A satellite could fall out of orbit and hit it. Really, when you thought about it, what _couldn't_ go wrong?

Sadly, these possibilities, along with many others, only occurred to Maggie after she'd boarded.

"I changed my mind, I want to get off," she whimpered pitifully.

Her best friend and roommate, Alethea Byron, laughed remorselessly. "Too late now, you're already on it."

The clear capsule inched slowly toward the heavens, its leisurely pace in blatant contrast to Maggie's heartbeat, which resembled a metronome on its highest setting. She was trapped. Trapped like a rat on a sinking ship. Actually, more like a rat in a hot air balloon. _What a weird but cute image,_ she thought disconnectedly.

Oh, but they were definitely getting higher now. The Houses of Parliament were distinctly smaller than they had been a moment ago. Maggie retreated to the bench in the middle of the capsule and sat down, hiding her face with her long red curtain of hair. "I hate you, Thea, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," she repeated over and over.

The tall black girl collapsed onto the seat beside her. The glass contraption did not even wobble, but Maggie swears to this day that the whole thing gave a sickening lurch. "Get a life, _Magnolia_," said Thea, delighting in the glare she received. She knew Maggie hated her full given name. "I'm almost positive we're not going to die."

Maggie nearly choked on her own mortal dread. "_Almost!?_"

"Well, you know, there's always a chance. But it's like, one in a billion."

"Oh, well, in that case, let's rent one and live in it. I always wanted to live in a place with transparent walls."

"Okay, probably more like one in a million," Thea continued, as if she hadn't heard. "I really shouldn't exaggerate like that." She slapped her friend on the arm. "But hey, you're not too scared for sarcasm! That's encouraging."

"Says you, woman."

Thea jumped to her feet. "Come on," she whined. "If you don't look, you'll regret it forever."

With a theatrical sigh, Maggie allowed herself to be dragged away from the safety of the bench. Following Thea's lead, she cautiously edged past the other passengers and made her way to the glass.

The view really was spectacular. It was better than anything Maggie had ever read about, or heard about, or even seen on _Rick Steves' Europe_. This was what she'd come to England to see. The threat of gruesome death now just seemed a mere inconvenience.

"Good God, I love you, London," she breathed.

"What is it with you and London?" Thea asked as she stood beside her. "It's been an obsession with you, ever since we were kids. I mean, I like it, too, but this goes beyond liking." She stared at Maggie as if in sudden realization. "If London was a guy, you'd marry it."

Maggie rolled her sage green eyes. "You're an idiot. And no, I wouldn't."

"Yes you would, you would _so_ marry London."

"Well, look at it!" Maggie raised her arms in an all-encompassing gesture. "Have you ever seen anything so old and beautiful and full of such delicious history? Look," she said, pointing out across the river. "The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. James's Park... and way out there, you can just see Buckingham Palace. Even in Maryland, you can't see this kind of history. How are you not enthralled by this place?"

Thea crossed her arms. "Are you saying you like old dudes?"

Maggie hit her.

* * *

As the day progressed, it seemed destined to be filled with touristy activities. After returning to sweet terra firma, Maggie and Thea immediately crossed Westminster Bridge and toured the Abbey. Upon stumbling quite unintentionally into Poets' Corner, Maggie heaved rapturous sighs at seeing the final resting places of so many of her favorite writers. At Thea's insistence, they proceeded on to Madame Tussaud's, where she let out a squeal when she found out it was "totally not illegal" to touch the waxen statues. She draped herself shamelessly all over Johnny Depp and David Beckham, while Maggie, ever the classic movie lover, was more inclined to rest her head on the shoulders of James Dean and Humphrey Bogart. Neither had been very tall, apparently. 

They blundered their way to the exit — though not before giving Freddie Mercury a farewell squeeze — and blinked in the sudden light. Thea yawned and checked her wristwatch. "Man! Ogling lifeless facsimiles of hot guys took longer than I thought it would. Where should we go next?"

Maggie bit her lip, already regretting what she was about to say. "You'll probably hate me for saying this—"

Thea's brown eyes narrowed. "Maggie," she said warningly.

"—But can we _please_ go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum? It's only a block away, and I'd _kill_ myself if I didn't go, knowing it was so close! Please? Theeaaa..."

Her friend laughed. "You are the dorkiest dork that ever dorked," she said, not unkindly. "Fine, let's go. I don't want to have to pay for your funeral."

For the first few minutes it looked as though she might have to, after all. Maggie hardly seemed to breathe as she slowly perused the replica of the famous residence at 221B. Her eyes drank in every minute detail, from the Persian slipper and the violin — probably not a Stradivarius — to the jackknife on the mantlepiece and, to her secret dismay, the little morocco case. It was like she had died and gone to Baker Street, only she didn't even have to die. Always a plus, not dying.

"Hey, look," said Thea, donning a rather frayed deerstalker and holding a cherrywood pipe. "Elementary, my dear Watson!" she crowed in a dreadful attempt at a British accent.

"Holmes never said that, you know," Maggie remonstrated. "And he never wore that ridiculous hat, either, so take it off." Thea stuck out her bottom lip, but obeyed. "Lord, woman, haven't I taught you anything?"

"Clearly, no." Thea went to the fireplace and idly examined some sort of Victorian gewgaw. "What was I saying earlier about weird obsessions?" she said, as if to herself. Maggie peered down at the contents of an old Gladstone bag and tried to ignore her. "Now that I think about it, your fixation with London began at around the same time you started reading those Sherlock Holmes stories." Her eyes widened, and she hit Maggie - a common theme for the day. "Now I get it! You're not in love with London! You're in love with Sherlock!"

"Don't call him that," Maggie said automatically. However, she quickly regained her look of amused disbelief. "But yay, more stupid theories, please!"

Thea smirked at her. "You know I'm right."

The sad thing was, Maggie did know. She also knew that the object of her infatuation was technically not all that physically attractive, unless one preferred scrawny, hawk-nosed brainiacs. She knew, too, that he would no doubt be an infuriating individual in real life, with all his bizarre and occasionally appalling habits. But for whatever reason, and against all logic, Maggie had been head-over-heels for Holmes since she was thirteen.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, really," Thea was saying as she sat back in one of the armchairs and pretended to blow smoke rings toward the ceiling. "Being in love with a fictional character, I mean. After all, I'm totally in love with Atticus Finch. Though who wouldn't be?" She sighed dreamily. "What a fox."

"You were saying...?"

"Something about..."

"..Fictional characters?"

"Oh yeah! Well, there are certain advantages to being in love with fictional characters." She counted off the points on her fingers. "For one thing, there are no surprises with them. You've already read about their every action, so you always know what they're going to do. Also, they never get fat. Furthermore—"

"Fat? Really? Are you that superficial?"

"Would you like your Holmes as much if he looked like his chunky know-it-all brother?"

That threw Maggie briefly. "Have I even told you about Mycroft?"

"Of course, how else would I know about him? The point it, would you?"

Maggie had nothing to say to this, which Thea took as a no.

"Exactly. Fictional guys never fade over time. They remain as awesome as they ever were. Sometimes they get even more awesome. And they never die." She sat up abruptly. "Plus you don't get sick of them, like you would with a real guy. And even if you did, you could just close the book and _poof!_ Problem solved."

Maggie laughed. "You make a good case, Mrs. Finch." Then her smile faded, and she spoke more softly. "The only thing is... Holmes _did_ die." Her small hand lighted on the silent violin. "That jerk Doyle got tired of him and pushed him over a cliff, locked in the clutches of his worst enemy." She shook her mass of red curls. "How could he do it? How could he just kill off the greatest detective in fiction, beloved by the whole world?"

Thea shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe he wanted Holmes to bow out gracefully, before he wore out his own popularity. Or it could just be like you said. Doyle got tired of him."

"But _why?_" demanded Maggie indignantly. "Who could ever get tired of Holmes?"

"You," her friend said with a smirk.

Maggie gasped in outrage. "Never!"

"Oh, yes, you would." Thea's voice was infuriatingly smug. "Believe me, you should be glad Sherlock Holmes isn't real. If he was, I suspect he would drive you completely insane."

Ah, the ominously prophetic things we say when we have no idea what might become of them.

* * *

Their days in London passed quickly. The girls tried to see as much as they could — the Tower of London, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Library, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace — but there simply wasnt enough time to see everything they would have liked to have seen. There was no doubt Maggie would have lived there in a heartbeat, if she'd had unlimited funds and no responsibilities, but that was just wishful thinking. Thea could have lived at Harrod's. 

On their last day in the great melting pot, Maggie insisted that they find a genuine London antique shop. "I haven't gotten any souvenirs for myself, except for this two-quid scarf that was probably made in Indonesia," she said as they emerged from the Victoria and Albert Museum. "I want to find something unique and rare and utterly British."

"Well, you'll definitely find it at Antiquarius," Thea replied. "I read about it on the Internet before we came. It's the biggest antique seller in London, with over a hundred shops. They're sure to have all kinds of crazy crap. Come on, it's not far from here."

It certainly was big, Maggie decided. She scarcely knew what to do with herself as they wandered the dimly lit stalls. There seemed to be a shop suited to every passing fancy of mankind. There were stalls selling furniture, hats, glassware, old toys, timepieces, ceramics. She nearly started slavering at the mouth when she saw a shop devoted entirely to vintage clothing, selling everything from the Edwardian era to the 1970s.

But so far nothing she had seen had spoken to her yet, really called out to her, begging to be taken home with her. She was almost ready to give up and settle on a refrigerator magnet shaped like a red telephone box when she found it.

They were in a dark shop crammed with all manner of knicknacks and shiny things. It purported to be a silver merchant, but that might have been a euphemistic way of saying "junk". There were spotted serving spoons, tarnished coffee pots, dull knives, and pointless little boxes upon which the decorative engraving had long since worn off. Maggie was about to tell Thea she was ready to leave when something caught her eye.

It was a magnifying glass, resting forlornly on a stained tea tray like it had simply been deposited in the most convenient place at the time. The handle was wooden — walnut, by the color of it — but the rim was definitely silver. Frankly, it had seen better days, but it had been quite a pretty thing, once upon a time.

Maggie picked it up speculatively and held it over the nearest object she could find, an old jewelry box. The lens was shockingly powerful; she could make out every detail on the box's surface, down to the tiniest engraved rosebud. _Not bad,_ she thought. _A little silver polish and some glass cleaner, and it'd be good as new._

"Whoa, now you're starting to _look_ like Sherlock Holmes!"

She quickly lowered the glass to find Thea grinning at her. "God, I hope not," she said jokingly. "No girl deserves to have a nose that big."

"Except for a few girls we knew in high school." Thea examined Maggie's find. "That's pretty cool, actually. You should get it. I, however, desperately need to find a bathroom. Or maybe I should say 'loo'," she added. "I'll meet you at the entrance, okay?"

"Mm-hmm."

As Thea fairly sprinted off, Maggie again held the magnifying glass to her freckled face. There appeared to be a small scratch in the wooden handle. On closer inspection, it was not a scratch, but rather an inscription, carved by some crude implement. _Maybe a pocketknife,_ she thought. But the shop was too dim to make out the letters, and she moved to bring it toward the light.

_"Can you hear me?"_

The sudden voice in her ear made her jump in surprise. She turned around quickly to find its source, but the only other person in the stall was the proprietress, a bony middle-aged woman whose hair was pulled back so tightly that it was giving her a home face-lift.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" she asked nervously.

The woman looked up. "No, love, I didn't say anything."

Maggie hadn't thought she had. The voice she had heard had been nothing like that of the shopkeeper. It had been a man's voice, she was sure of it; a quiet but clear tenor, with an upper-class, yet old-fashioned English accent.

_This place is just getting to me,_ she told herself. _All these strange old antiques and whatnot. It's probably the—_

The voice came again, its soft words caressing her ear. _"You _do_ hear me, do you not?"_

"Who's there?" she whispered, fighting blind panic.

"What was that, dear?" the shopkeeper asked, her pencilled eyebrows raised.

Maggie swallowed. "I, um... I..." she stammered, her voice trembling.

_"Have you come to help me, child?"_ the voice asked with a distinctly hopeful note.

"I... I was wondering how much you wanted for this," she said quickly, bringing the magnifying lens to the counter. She was on the verge of frightened tears.

The proprietress seemed not to notice. "Well, it's been handled a bit roughly," she said thoughtfully. "And someone's scratched their initials into it. I'll let you have it for five pounds." Maggie scrambled in her purse for a fiver and slapped it on the counter. "Thanks very much, love. But don't you want me to wrap it for you?" she called as Maggie almost ran out of the shop.

"No, thank you!"

She found Thea waiting outside the double doors of Antiquarius, holding a die-cast model of a double-decker bus. "I got distracted on my way from the loo. But look how cute!" Then she frowned. "You okay, Maggs?"

Maggie nodded vigorously, trying to dispel her shivers. "Yeah. I'm fine, it's just..." She cleared her throat. "That place was starting to give me the creeps."

"Totally, me too! You want to get some dinner?"

Maggie grinned, feeling better already. "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese?"

"By Jove, what a spiffing idea, old chap!" Thea exclaimed, doffing an imaginary hat. "Pie and mash it is, then!"

"On you?"

"Pshh, you wish, chump."

Rolling her eyes, Maggie followed her friend to the nearest Underground station, carefully tucking the magnifying glass into her purse. In her haste to catch up with Thea, she forgot to read the initials on the handle.

* * *

**Gee, I wonder what they are. Well, the end! Of Chapter One, anyway. I hope you liked it, because I had fun writing it. Let me just say, Maggie's not the only one who loves London. I got to go there last year, and I didn't want to leave. Too bad it's so friggin' expensive. Anyhow, please tell me what you think of the story thus far. I shall be much obliged.**

**-Bixby**


	3. To See What Others Overlook

**You guys, you're so sweet! Thanks so much for all your reviews! I swear, Sherlock Holmes fans are so incredibly nice. I had no idea. Anyway, I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long. So here's chapter two!**

**Oh, also, I don't own Holmes. Sadly.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Two, or To See What Others Overlook

"London calling to the top of the dial, and after all this, won't you give me a smile?" Thea Byron sang directly in Maggie's ear as the plane began the agonizingly slow process of taxiing onto the runway. Maggie shoved her irritably away. "Come on, cheer up," said Thea. "It's not like you'll never come here again."

Maggie sighed, drumming her fingertips on the armrest of her airline seat. "How do you know?" she said dismally. "I've been saving all my life for this vacation. And I don't have to tell you how hard it was, hiding the money from my family." Thea nodded in sympathy. "Anyway, the only reason I could afford it now was because of that insane deal with British Airways."

"Which I am _going_ to pay you back for," Thea said emphatically.

Maggie waved her hand dismissively. "Don't say another word about it. I wouldn't have even considered going without you. What would a London holiday be without my best friend?"

"Awww..." The black girl leaned over and hugged her around the shoulders. "This guy right here, this is the guy," she said in a slurred voice.

"Get off me, wench."

The past four hours had undeniably been a low point in the girls' vacation. They had checked out of their hotel that morning and killed some time before leaving for Heathrow at two in the afternoon; though their flight was scheduled to leave at six, the amount of time it took to get through the airport meant they had had to arrive ridiculously early. The crowds were bad enough, but the new security rules were what really got to them. In addition to the prohibition of liquids — which included liquid makeup — the airlines had now banned anything with a soft consistency, such as cheese and... well, plastic explosives. Maggie was very glad that she had packed her wheel of Stilton in her checked luggage.

Where, she knew, it would make her clothes stink to high heaven.

The massive plane finally began to pick up speed, and the passengers directed their attention out the double-layered windows. Maggie's stomach gave a lurch as its wheels left the ground and the landscape fell quickly away. She turned to Thea, who was grinning wildly. "That never gets old," she said.

"Speak for yourself," Maggie replied weakly. She turned to the window again, trying to get one last glimpse of London. It was so beautiful, she thought, looking down at the great city, admiring the way the fading sunlight reflected off the sinuous twists and turns of the Thames. She could still see the London Eye, towering above Jubilee Gardens and effectively dwarfing what should have been the tallest feature in London, the Houses of Parliament and the Clock Tower that housed Big Ben. _Oh, well, that's progress,_ thought Maggie.

Thea leaned over once more and pushed Maggie aside slightly to get a better view. "Goodbye, London!" she called down to the city below. "Goodbye, Princes William and Harry!"

Maggie laughed. "Goodbye, Trafalgar Square!" she said wistfully. "Goodbye, Lord Nelson!"

"Goodbye, Crown Jewels! Goodbye, ravens! Goodbye, nice Beefeater tour guy!"

"Whom you grossly over-tipped," Maggie added.

"I still don't understand the exchange rate."

Maggie shook her head, chuckling. "Goodbye, Worthington ale! Goodbye, sticky toffee pudding!"

"Good riddance, mashed peas," Thea said, pulling a disgusted face.

"Goodbye, Poets' Corner! Goodbye, Dickens; goodbye, Lord Tennyson; goodbye, Chaucer, sweet father of English literature!"

"You word-nerd," said Thea, laughing. "Goodbye, royal guards! Goodbye, cute guard that almost smiled at me!"

"Goodbye, Your Highness! Goodbye, Your Highness's corgis!"

"Goodbye, merry old England!" Thea sat back in her seat and pulled out her copy of _Skymall_. "Don't worry, Maggs," she said reassuringly as she put in her earbuds, "you'll see her again. I know you will."

Maggie looked down at the city, already shrinking away beneath them. She rested her chin on the heel of her palm and sighed to herself. "Goodbye, Baker Street," she said softly. "Goodbye, Holmes."

* * *

It was nine in the evening when their plane landed at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, otherwise known as BWI. Of course, that was nine p.m. Eastern Standard Time; according to the girls' internal clock, it was two in the morning. After retrieving their luggage at the baggage claim and hauling it through Customs, they still had to race to catch the next train on the Light Rail to their apartment in the suburbs of Mount Vernon in downtown Baltimore, since neither of them had wanted to leave their cars at the airport for a week and a half. By the time they had reached the third floor of their complex, they could have best been described as the walking dead.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry, I have to go to the bathroom," Thea urged as Maggie unbolted the door. She pushed it open, and her roommate darted inside, dropping all her bags in the foyer and disappearing down the darkened hallway.

Maggie flicked on the lights and staggered inside, dragging her luggage behind her. Everything seemed to be exactly as they'd left it; the television, stereo, and dvd player were present and accounted for. _Unlike a certain incident four years ago,_ she thought sourly. Then again, the burglar was still safely locked away in prison.

"Ahh, relief," said Thea, emerging from the bathroom. She checked her watch, running a hand through her straightened black hair. "Sacred bovine, it's like, four a.m. Greenwich Meantime!" she exclaimed. "I, for one, am going to bed. What about you?"

Maggie shook her head. "I need to unpack my cheese before its fetid stench takes up permanent residence in my wardrobe. Care to try some before retiring?"

"Not on your life."

"Then I bid thee good morrow, fair lady."

Thea sighed in a long-suffering, but good-natured sort of way. "'Night, Maggs."

While her friend lurched off to her bedroom, Maggie looked down at her luggage and groaned at the prospect of heaving it toward her own room. Sucking in her lungs, she picked them up and made her way slowly down the hallway. As she did so, she passed the hall mirror and stopped, genuinely startled by her exhausted appearance. Her long, curly red hair was a frizzy, nebulous anomaly, her full lips were pale, and there were dark smudges under her mossy green eyes. _Blug,_ she thought eloquently. _To think, countless people saw me like this._

She kicked open her bedroom door and fumbled for the lightswitch. As she dropped her bags on the Oriental rug and looked around, a slow smile crept over her tired face. As much as Maggie had loved London, it was an immense relief to be back in her own room, with its tall four-post bed and her bookcase crammed with all her favorite authors, and best of all, her very own plush, high-backed wing chair she'd found at a second-hand store. She took particular pride in that chair, both for its lovely Victorian look and for the unbelievably good deal she'd gotten for it.

Speaking of good deals, that reminded her...

Unzipping her largest suitcase, Maggie pulled out a few clothes and quickly set her evil-smelling Stilton aside before carefully lifting an object bundled in her green scarf. She slowly unwrapped the magnifying glass, relieved to find it hadn't been damaged on its journey. _Though I probably wouldn't be able to tell, anyway,_ she thought as she held it up, the light glinting off the scratched surface of the lens.

Her gaze fell on the handle, and the carved initials again caught her attention. She'd forgotten, in her eagerness to leave the creepy shop, to ascertain just what the letters were. Now she brought it close to her face, squinting at the wood.

"S.H.," she whispered.

"My initials," came a sudden voice behind her. "This was my lens, and now, apparently, it is yours."

Maggie spun around, her heart in her throat, to find a tall, thin man standing calmly in front of her, hands behind his back.

Her scream very likely woke the entire apartment building.

She tore out of her room, banging the door shut behind her and shrieking like a banshee. Thea stumbled out of her own bedroom, bewildered and alarmed and evidently having fallen asleep without changing her clothes. "What is it, what's going on, what's wrong?" she asked dazedly.

Maggie clutched her roommate's arm in a vise grip. "A man, there's a man in my room, a tall British cat burglar, only he's not very stealthy!" she babbled nonsensically.

"A burglar!?" Thea became instantly alert. "But don't burglars go for big stuff, like electronics? Nothing's missing, I checked!"

"So did I! But there's some dude in my room, and I don't know how he got in!"

"Did he attack you?"

"No... He didn't really do anything. But hello, intruder in our humble abode!"

"Right." Thea cleared her throat, her eyes fixed on Maggie's door. "We should get weapons."

"Um, _yeah_ we should!"

They sprinted back to Thea's room, Maggie keeping an eye out while her friend rummaged around for something to use as defense. Her heart was pounding in her ribcage. That man... there had been something disturbingly familiar about him when he spoke, and she was afraid she knew why. It was his voice. It was exactly like the voice she'd heard in that London antique shop. Only this time it was clearer, more distinct.

More _real._

Thea returned, holding a baseball bat in one hand and a clock radio in the other. "Okay! Locked and loaded!"

Maggie regarded the latter object with raised eyebrows. "A radio, Thea? Really?"

"What? You could totally concuss someone with this thing! Oh, fine, _I'll_ take the radio!"

She thrust the bat into Maggie's hands, and they crept down the hall toward her closed door. _What are we doing!?_ she thought, starting to tremble. _We're just wimpy little girls with wimpy little arms! We should be calling the police!_ But she was afraid if they waited for the authorities to arrive, the intruder might escape in the same undetectable manner in which he had arrived.

They stopped before the door, and Thea motioned her to one side. Maggie watched in horror as her friend rapped boldly on it with her knuckles. "Hey!" she said loudly. "Listen up, you! My roommate and I are coming in, and we're both armed! If you try anything stupid, you're going to find yourself with several fewer teeth and one mother of a headache!" She nudged Maggie and counted to three silently on her fingers. "_Now!!_"

She twisted the knob and burst into the room, obscuring Maggie's view of her intruder. To her surprise, Thea slowly lowered her ludicrous excuse for a weapon. "Uhhh..."

"Thea! What are you doing!?"

She turned around at looked at Maggie with a strange expression. "There's no one in here, Maggs," she said.

"_What!?_"

Maggie pushed her aside in disbelief, and her jaw dropped. There certainly _was_ someone in here; the tall, rail-thin stranger was still there, standing quite complacently on her Persian rug, acting for all the world like he'd lived there his entire life. She gaped at him, and he simply lifted a black eyebrow.

She whirled on Thea. "Are you serious?" she said incredulously. "What is this, some kind of joke?"

Completely ignoring the man in Maggie's room, she yawned and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I think you're just tired. We both are. I mean, we have been awake for almost twenty-four hours. You probably just dreamed the whole thing."

"No, I didn't! I—" Maggie looked from her friend to the stranger, her mind unable to process what was happening. Either Thea was playing some elaborate prank on her, or she was just suffering from selective blindness. There was no way she couldn't see that man. He was right _there._

Now the man cleared his throat unobtrusively. "Unfortunately, this is not a practical joke, young lady," he said quietly in his plummy old-fashioned voice. "Your friend cannot see me, and judging by her conspicuous failure to react, she cannot hear me, either."

Maggie was speechless.

"You have nothing to fear," he continued, taking a step forward. Maggie instinctively backed up into the doorway, and he stopped. "I am not going to harm you. Indeed, I doubt I could even if it were my intent. But may I suggest," he added delicately with a nod toward Thea, "that you go along with your friend's postulation for the moment?"

She swallowed hard. How could she possibly trust this man? He was an intruder! But if that was the case, then why was Thea pretending he wasn't there? More importantly, why _would_ she?

"Stop looking at me. Look at your friend. Tell her that she is correct, that you must have been dreaming."

Despite her misgivings, Maggie found herself obeying the man's commands without even thinking; there was something in his subtle self-assurance that demanded respect.

She turned to Thea, who was now looking rather worried, and managed to smile. "Yeah, you're right," she said, trying to sound convincingly sheepish. "I must have been so tired when I was unpacking that I just dozed off. Sorry for waking you up with all of this."

Something in Maggie's tone must have relieved her; her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled tiredly. "No problemo," she said, fluffing her disheveled hair. "Just leave all that stuff for tomorrow, and get some sleep."

"Will do. Good night." Maggie watched as Thea trudged off to her bedroom. Then she stepped inside her own room and slammed the door behind her. Pushing her fears down, she forced herself to stride up to the man and pin him with her most intimidating glare.

"All right, what's going on?" she asked in a low but forceful tone. "Who are you? What are you doing here? And why can't my friend see you?"

To her surprise, the man sighed wearily and turned slightly away from her. "I fear you would not believe me even if I told you," he said in a monotone.

Maggie narrowed her eyes at him. Now that her reason was not eclipsed by her terror and she was partially sure he wasn't going to kill her — at least, not yet — she took the opportunity to study him more carefully. He was very tall, at least six feet, and painfully gaunt, as if he'd been under a lot of stress recently. And he was dressed most inexplicably in a dark gray suit of a quaint, dated cut, complete with necktie and waistcoat.

He wasn't necessarily a handsome man, she thought; at least not Hollywood handsome, but he was certainly striking. His face was pale and narrow, with high, hollow cheekbones, a strong chin, and a sharp, prominent nose. His lips were thin and firm, and he had thick black eyebrows to match his raven hair. And his eyes...

Oh my, his eyes. They were the most unusual, enthralling eyes Maggie had ever seen. They were a very light gray, with a ring of darker gray around the outer rim of the irises. But it was their intensity and intelligence — genius? — that held her riveted. As he peered down at her from under those hooded lids, she felt pierced to her soul. And she didn't think he was even aware of it.

Suddenly she felt a shiver climb the stairs of her spine. The voice, that face, those extraordinary eyes... They all seemed so very familiar. He was like an old friend she had never met.

Suppressing another shudder, Maggie took a deep breath and looked him square in the eye. "How do you know I won't believe you?" she asked. "Nothing you say can be any less believable than what just happened. And anyway, I have a right to know. You're in my room, and I want to know why."

The man stared speculatively down at her for a long while, and Maggie refused to break his gaze. Finally he seemed to come to some decision. "Very well," he murmured, almost to himself. "I shall tell you the whole truth, and omit nothing. If you still doubt me... well, it shall be through no fault of my own."

Maggie crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

Shaking his head, he drew himself up to his full height. "My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said quietly. "Possibly you may have heard of me. At any rate, I — what are you doing?"

Trembling with rage, Maggie had picked up the baseball bat and was twisting it between her hands. "Get out," she whispered angrily.

The man's eyes widened at her sudden change from skepticism to raw hatred. "My dear girl, I am afraid you are under some sort of misapprehension."

"On the contrary, I know exactly what's going on." Her deadly calm voice sounded strange even in her own ears. "I should have know instantly from the way Thea didn't even flinch when she saw you. This was her idea to begin with."

"I beg your pardon, but I'm not sure I understand you."

"Of course you do!" she snapped. She felt angry tears welling in her eyes. "God, I can't believe I fell for it! She knew I adored him, so she found someone who looked like him just to play this cruel trick on me, and I fell for it!"

"Frankly, young lady, I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about," said the man in a tired voice. "But I assure you, this is no trick. I am who I say I am."

"Shut up!" Maggie raised the bat. "I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're Thea's friend or not. If you don't get out this _instant_, I promise I will beat the stuffing out of you."

The man sighed impatiently. "All this is pointless," he said, taking a step forward. "If you would simply listen—"

Maggie didn't hesitate. She took a swing, fueled by her fury and indignation. The hard wood passed through thin air, spinning her in an almost complete circle. She stared up at the man, unable to believe her eyes. He was completely unharmed, not even a single black hair out of place. But she hadn't missed. She'd hit him dead-on.

"Now do you understand?" he asked quietly.

Wordlessly, Maggie dropped the bat with a wooden clatter. Then she turned and ran from the room. Feeling her way blindly down the hallway, she stumbled into the living room and dropped onto the couch, trembling all over. Fighting back a sob of fear, she lay on her side on the cushions, trying not to think about the implications of what she had just seen, until finally, her mind shut down completely from fatigue. And that was finally how she fell asleep, curled in a tight ball with her head on the armrest. No one followed her from her room.

* * *

**Gosh, this is fun. That's all I'll say for now, that this is totally the most fun ever. Now off I go, to put chapter three together. Some reviews might persuade me to work faster!**

**-Bixby**


	4. Outside the Ordinary Laws of Nature

**Holy cow, thank you so much for all the sweet reviews! Good heavens, I've only written two chapters and a prologue. Now I'm desperately hoping not to disappoint. I can promise you I'll do my best. And now, chapter three!**

**Maggie and Thea are my own original ideas. Holmes is not. He belongs to Conan Doyle.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Three, or Outside the Ordinary Laws of Nature

Maggie tossed about fitfully in a dark, restless sleep. At the mercy of her dreams, she found herself plagued by an unknown force, an entity that could be heard but not seen. In its whispered, silken tones, it told her it was reason — pure Reason itself personified. And yet in the same breath, it willed her to give up her own reason, to relinquish her sanity, her very self, in order to attain real truth.

"Give in," was its seducing whisper. "You know the truth. Give yourself utterly to it."

She refused to comply, shaking her head violently. "No," she said, trembling but firm. "I can't do it. I _won't._"

When Reason spoke again, its voice was warm and intimate. "Oh, but you will," it replied in that lovely accent redolent of tea and scones with clotted cream. "For you know that when you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains—"

"Shut up," she protested feebly, feeling her resolve start to weaken.

"—However improbable," it continued inexorably, "must be the truth. And you know the truth, my dear. You have known it since you first heard it inside that shop."

Maggie swallowed. "That's not true..."

"It is. You think you have persuaded yourself to believe otherwise, but in your heart, in the deepest recesses of your soul, you have already surrendered to me. It is only your mind which holds you back." The voice drifted close, flitting across her neck like butterflies' wings and causing her to shiver with unwanted pleasure. "Will you not yield?" it pleaded enticingly. "Will you refuse me? Will you really cling to your precious logic while ignoring the truth?"

She turned away from the voice and shut her eyes, as if trying to block it out. "You're asking me to do the impossible," she said softly. "How can I abandon logic, when the truth is completely illogical? How can I give up reason in order to gain it?"

The voice sighed against her hair, an immeasurably sad sound. "Denial is an endless circle of frustration," it said, "a refusal to reach out for what we cannot help but desire. Why must you push me aside? You know every word that I have spoken is the truth."

A line of trouble creased Maggie's smooth forehead. For a long time — an eternity, it seemed — she could not bring herself to answer, to acknowledge to whom it was she was _really_ speaking. Finally she spoke, in a low, desperate tone.

"Yes, I know," she replied. "I know, but I don't _want_ to know. I don't want to admit who you are. If it were really you, then you wouldn't be saying these things. Logic is everything to you."

Its answer was quiet, but kind. "Logic, as noble a pursuit as it may be, tends to disregard what it cannot understand. But reason, my dear — pure _reason_ — does not ignore the truth. It weighs each explanation against the other, and decides upon the most likely."

"No matter how far-fetched it may seem," Maggie whispered.

"Precisely."

Taking a deep breath, Maggie forced herself to turn toward the voice, and opened her eyes.

A pair of cool gray eyes steadily returned her gaze.

"Now do you understand?" he asked softly.

* * *

Maggie hit the floor with a muffled thud.

Her eyes snapped open, looking around the living room in panic. She took in the sofa, towering above her, and her own crumpled position on the carpet. Then she sighed. Somehow, as she was thrashing around in her crazy nightmare, she must have thrown herself clean off the couch.

She sat up painfully, rubbing her arm where it had struck the coffee table. What time was it? she wondered. Then she realized she was still wearing her wristwatch. _Half past ten,_ she thought. What a mercy it was that she still had two more days of vacation time to recover from this horrendous jet-lag.

Funny. She always took off her watch before going to bed; she couldn't stand the sound of it ticking on her arm as it rested by her head. Why hadn't she removed it the night before? For that matter, why had she not changed her clothes? It seemed she had dispensed with the idea of her bed altogether. What on earth had possessed her to sleep on the couch?

As she rose to her feet with the aid of the coffee table, she noticed a slip of paper on its gleaming surface. It was a note, addressed to her in Thea's handwriting. She took it up and brought it to her puzzled face.

_Hey Maggzez! Guess you were still too freaked out from the episode last night to sleep in your own room. Hope you don't get a neck ache from that God-awful couch. Anyway, we're out of Honey Bunches of Oats, so I'm going to the store. If you think of anything else we need, call me on my cell. Bye, Bushy-Haired One!_

"Last night," Maggie muttered. Oh yeah. _Now_ she remembered. That psychotic dream she'd had about the tall British man who claimed to be Sherlock Holmes. She must have _really_ been tired to be so affected by such a nonsensical thing. And she couldn't believe she had been so scared that she had slept on the couch. That was probably what had led to her other dream — less frightening, perhaps, but no less disturbing. _Pshh, what a girl,_ she rebuked herself.

She gave a jaw-popping yawn and dragged a hand grumpily through her wild red curls. _Bushy-haired is right,_ she thought, catching her reflection in the dark television screen. She needed a shower and a change of clothes desperately. But her top priority now was unpacking those infernal suitcases before she decided to simply throw them out the window.

With a put-upon groan, Maggie slumped off down the hall, rubbing her elbow absently. No doubt her room reeked of Stilton. And her clothes would, of course, be hopelessly wrinkled; though she needed to take them to the laundromat, anyway. _Ugh, not the laundromat,_ she thought as she pushed open her door. She couldn't count how many times she had gone all the way down there and realized she'd forgotten something. Usually her favorite pair of jeans, or—

"Ah, so you _are_ still here. I was worried that you might have gone indefinitely."

Maggie shrieked at the sudden voice, stubbing her toe on the baseball bat which lay on her rug in the middle of her room. Biting back a stream of expletives, she glared up at the man sitting so cavalierly in her beloved wingchair, one long leg thrown casually over the other.

Damn it, she _knew_ it hadn't been a dream.

"All right, seriously," she said, her fists clenched more in anger than in fear. "Get out of my apartment right now, before I call the police."

The man put his long, spidery fingertips together, studying her from under his heavy eyelids. "I fear the authorities, with their usual efficiency, would see precisely what your friend did," he said. "That is, nothing."

Maggie had a strong suspicion she might be losing her mind. "Just get out!" she cried. "Leave me alone!"

"My dear girl," he said indulgently, rising to his feet and stepping toward her. She stiffened, but did not retreat. "I have no desire to make trouble for you. All the same, you must know it is a bit more complicated than you realize. I cannot simply 'leave you alone', as you put it."

"And why not?" she demanded.

The man looked at her with a curious expression on his pale face. "Surely you have already reached some conclusion of your own," he suggested quietly, sounding _awfully_ like the Sherlock Holmes she knew.

As she returned his calm gaze, she felt her glare soften. "I might have," she replied in a low tone. "But I don't want to think about it. If you're really him..." She shook her head abruptly, casting those thoughts aside. "No, you _can't_ be who you say you are! It's not possible!"

"And yet, here I am," he said airily, and she scowled. "Oh, come, you must concede that those are my initials on the lens you purchased in that dreary little shop."

"Your initials?" Maggie repeated, as if hearing him for the first time. Her eyes fell on the magnifying glass, which still sat upon her open suitcase. She picked it up hesitantly and brought it to the light from the window. She didn't know what she had expected to find; perhaps that the initials had somehow changed since last night. But there they were, carved unsentimentally on the handle: S.H.

If they were any other two letters, or even the same letters on another object, Maggie might have dismissed them. But those particular letters, carved on an instrument used specifically for examining and scrutinizing?

Could it really be... _his?_

"Okay," she said shakily, "even if this thing _did_ belong to Sherlock Holmes — which I'm not saying it did — then you couldn't possibly be him. I mean, assuming he _was_ real — which I'm not saying he _was_ — then he would have been dead for over a hundred years."

"I do not mean to contradict you," the man said, interrupting her, "but you have, I am sorry to say, erred in several of your statements. I am, in fact, Sherlock Holmes, and that lens you are holding did, in fact, belong to me. What is more, you seem to be confused over whether or not I am a... a real person." He sighed somewhat bleakly. "That is rather more difficult to clarify. Suffice to say, I _was_ real. I did exist... a long time ago."

Something in his tone sent a shiver through her. Slowly, unwillingly, Maggie turned toward him, her mind revolting at what it was being told to process. "What, _exactly_, are you saying?" she asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

But his response did not come immediately. For a long time the man simply stared down at the magnifying glass she held in her hands. He appeared to be absorbed in some sort of mental conflict. Then he looked up at her, and again she was immobilized by his remarkable eyes.

"You seem to be familiar with me," he said quietly. "So I shall assume you also are familiar with the circumstances surrounding my last case, which culminated in Switzerland... and which also, unfortunately, ended in..." He paused carefully, gauging her reaction. "My own demise."

There was a silence. Maggie found herself unconsciously backing away. "No," she croaked.

"I realize how improbable this must sound—"

"Not improbable!" she shouted, stumbling in her effort to get away from him. "Impossible!"

"If you would only see reason—"

She let out a bitter laugh. "Reason," she mimed scornfully. "None of this is _reasonable._"

"Will you kindly stop interrupting me?" the man said, visibly annoyed. Maggie fell silent, still watching him apprehensively, and he continued in a calmer tone. "I do not blame you in the least for your skepticism. Were I in your place, I've no doubt I would react in much the same manner. However, even your clearly agitated mind cannot ignore what is obvious."

Maggie bit her lip, frightened at how undeniably _Holmes_ this man was. "And... what is obvious?" she managed to ask.

He regarded her like a parent humoring a difficult child. "Do you not recall what happened last night," he said, "when you had the audacity to assault me?"

All the air rushed at once out of Maggie's lungs. The baseball bat. Of _course_, how could she have forgotten about that? That had been no illusion. Her attack had simply met with thin air.

With trembling fingers, she stretched a hand toward the man, hardly knowing what she was doing. He made no move to stop her, but watched her with a dark, almost despairing look. For a moment her fingertips hovered over his thin, wiry arm. Then she took a deep breath and reached forward.

Her hand passed straight through him.

Maggie groaned in terror, turning on rapidly weakening legs and fleeing the room. This time the man was not content to let her go, as he had been the night before. He followed her into the living room, his feet making no sound as he did so.

"You mustn't fear, my child," he was saying in the most soothing of voices. "All this must be terribly upsetting for you, but you have nothing to worry about."

She rounded on him suddenly. "Nothing to worry about?" she said, incredulous. "Either you're a ghost, or I'm going crazy, and neither of those options are very appealing to me!"

"I assure you, you are not mad," he told her. "At least," he added judiciously, "not in any way that I can readily discern."

"Wait a minute," said Maggie, ignoring him. "That must be it! I must be schizophrenic, like Russell Crowe in _A Beautiful Mind_! Doesn't it usually happen when you're a young adult, seeing things and junk? That's what this must be! You're just a figment of my imagination!"

The man peered down at her dubiously. "Oh yes? Your imagination must be astonishingly vivid."

"Don't talk to me," she said, striding purposefully toward the coat closet. "You're not real. I have to go to the hospital. Maybe, if they don't commit me, they'll at least prescribe me something to make you go away."

"How _can_ I convince you that I am not merely a product of your unbalanced mind?" he asked vehemently. "Shall I use my talents for observation? Would that satisfy you?" He ran his keen eyes over her for a moment before taking in her apartment. "I could tell you that you are twenty-three — no, twenty-four years old, and that you are a teacher, or at least assist in the education of young children."

She narrowed her eyes at him, but did not pause in putting on her coat. "You are unmarried, obviously, though you wish to be married someday," he continued. "What else? You do not have any pets, though you are very fond of dogs. And either you are an orphan, or you despise your family."

That struck a chord with Maggie. She turned toward him, a thousand barbed words on the tip of her tongue, but she mastered herself with an effort. "Of _course_ you know everything about me," she spat. "You're _my_ hallucination!"

The man threw up his slender white hands. "Where do you think you are going?" he asked as she grabbed her purse and made for the door.

"I told you already. The hospital."

"Whatever for?"

"Because I need help! At least I'm sane enough to know that! Oh my God, I'm John Nash!"

She threw open the door, and very nearly collided with one of her neighbors — a man she didn't know very well named Bill Warner. She was spluttering out a hasty apology when the clear English voice of her personal tormentor rang out behind her.

"Wait! That man! That man is a bricklayer! Ask him, and he will tell you, I am certain of it!"

Clenching her teeth, Maggie stepped back inside and closed the door, looking up at him wordlessly.

"Is he a bricklayer?" he asked.

"How should I know?"

"Ha!" the man exclaimed. "If I were in your mind, I could not possibly know that, for the simple fact that _you_ do not. As it happens, I am quite confident he is."

She stared at him.

"Go on. Ask him. Why do you hesitate?"

"And how do you suggest I initiate _that_ conversation?" she demanded. "Hi, sorry to bother you, but I need some brickwork done in my _third-floor apartment!_"

He gazed down at her earnestly. "Please," he said simply. "Please ask him."

Maggie groaned. It was impossible to refuse that face, even if it _was_ a hallucination. "Fine," she muttered, turning to the door again. Swinging it open, she stepped out into the hall, almost missing her neighbor as he hurried off toward the stairwell.

"Mr. Warner?" she called.

He stopped. "Yeah?"

_I can't believe I'm doing this,_ she thought. "Are you, by any chance, a bricklayer?"

"Sure am," he replied instantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Why?"

Maggie's mouth suddenly stopped working. "Uhh," she said numbly. "Just... wondering. Thanks."

She shuffled back inside her apartment, closing the door mechanically behind her. Feeling herself start to tremble, she turned around very slowly and looked up at the man with astonished green eyes.

"Holmes?" she said weakly.

He sighed wearily. "I am afraid so," he replied.

* * *

**Oh goodness, what fun. I know this story is a little slow so far, but I had to establish a background. It'll have an actual plot soon, I assure you. So, what have I gotten myself into? Is the very idea of this story insane? More importantly, am I completely butchering Holmes' character? I sure hope not, but do tell me if I am. Meanwhile, I'll be writing the next chapter. Thanks for your support!**

—**Bixby**


	5. No Ghosts Need Apply

**That is a whole heck of a lot of reviews. I don't feel at all worthy. Holmes isn't mine, blah blah blah, insert disclaimer here.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Four, or No Ghosts Need Apply

"What is your name, child?"

She sat on one end of the sofa, her chin on her hands. Across from her, on the other end of the couch, his long white hands resting on his bony knees, sat Sherlock Holmes. Every time she looked over at him, she felt a fresh wave of alarm. So she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead of her, answering his questions in a wooden monotone.

"Maggie. Well, Magnolia Hill, but... everyone calls me Maggie."

"And, pray, where are we?" he asked politely.

"Baltimore, Maryland."

"Ah, yes, America," he said, knitting his brows. "I thought as much. And may I ask the precise date?"

"Um... August twenty-seventh, 2007."

"2007," he repeated under his breath, shaking his head in amazement. "Can it truly have been so long?" He stood up abruptly and began to noiselessly pace the room, which creeped Maggie out beyond measure. "And you brought me here, all the way from London, because...?"

"I didn't _mean_ to bring you here!" Maggie said despairingly, raising her head. "All I did was purchase an antique! I never intended to buy the ghost of a fictional detective!"

At this remark, Holmes stopped pacing and spoke, a trifle sharply. "For the final time, I am not fictional, as you must freely admit. Nor do I believe myself to be a ghost, for that matter," he added with a haughty sniff.

"No?" Maggie plucked a remote control from the coffee table and tossed it to him. Holmes instinctively moved to catch it, but it sailed right through him. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, _"Q.E.D."_

Holmes frowned and crossed his arms. "Well, well... Your evidence notwithstanding, I am not convinced that it necessarily makes me an... an apparition. The very notion is preposterous. I have, possibly, become _transfixed_ somehow since the... incident in Switzerland, into a state of... of..." He seemed to be struggling for words.

"Ghostliness?" Maggie offered helpfully. Her reward was a glare from the gaunt detective. "Look," she said in her best reasonable, everything's-okay voice. "All I know is, I'm talking to a man who supposedly died in the nineteenth century, yet, strangely enough, hasn't aged a day, and even more strangely, doesn't seem to conform to the basic laws of physics." She spread her hands in a powerless gesture. "I'm sorry, but if that doesn't describe a ghost, I don't know what does."

He stared down at her imperiously for a long moment. "Nonsense," he finally muttered, as if trying to convince himself. "I may not be exactly _tangible_ for the time being, but I am not a ghost." He spoke the offending word with particular disdain. "A ghost — if indeed such a thing did exist — is by all accounts an ethereal, otherworldly being, given to haunting dusty old manors and wailing eerily in the night. A ghost does not attempt to have rational conversations with the living... however fruitless they may be."

As she listened to Holmes rant, Maggie remarked to herself that she had rarely heard a voice better suited to sarcasm than his. "You're right," she said, irritated. "Ghosts are almost never this long-winded."

"My _dear_ young lady," Holmes began in a supremely condescending voice, "I do not mean to be discourteous—"

Maggie exploded to her feet, catching him off guard. "It's pretty clear that you _do_," she said peevishly, her fists on her hips. "And by the way, you can cut the phony formalities any time. I mean, no offense, but we both know polite words kind of lose their effectiveness when you say them in that rude, patronizing way."

Holmes gaped at her, evidently affronted by her blunt manner. "My God," he exclaimed. "Is this some sort of punishment? Was I banished to that dismal, horrid shop, only to be 'rescued' by an impudent little fishwife of a girl?"

Maggie couldn't believe what she was hearing. Here she had always worshiped this man, and he had the nerve to call her names? What a jerk store! "Impudent? _Fishwife?_" She pointed a finger at his hawk-like nose. "At least I'm not an arrogant, supercilious... snob!"

He attempted to bat her hand away — without success, of course. "How dare you," he said indignantly. "Good heavens, I had expected some things to change in the span of a century, but never did I imagine I would be forced to suffer such a brash, disrespectful brat!"

Now she was genuinely hurt. "Well," she answered calmly, glaring daggers, "at least _I'm_ not a _ghost!!_"

Suddenly the doorknob rattled, and Thea stepped into the foyer, carrying an armful of groceries. "Hey," she said, frowning. "Was the tv on just now?"

Maggie turned quickly away from Holmes, trying to cool her temper. "Uhh... yeah, I just turned it off," she replied, coming to take a bag of groceries off her roommate's hands.

"Oh, thanks." Together they put the things away, and Maggie was aware of Thea scrutinizing her. "Are you all right? You look kind of pale. You're not getting sick, are you?"

"Umm..." Maggie looked up and exchanged a glance with Holmes, who still appeared a little hot under the collar. "No, I'm fine," she heard herself saying. "But I'm... I'm, uh, still a little tired from sleeping on the couch last night. I think I'm going to take a nap."

Thea eyed her strangely. "Okay," she said slowly. "You're not hungry?"

"Not in the least," she muttered grimly.

She felt Thea watching her as she headed off down the hall to her room, motioning surreptitiously for Holmes to follow. Once inside, she waited for him to step past her, then closed the door. Shoving her hands through her mass of curls, she sat down on the edge of her four-poster bed, while Holmes prowled her room aimlessly, his hands in his trouser pockets.

As she watched him out of the corner of her eye, Maggie was suddenly overwhelmed with shame. Now that she was over the initial shocking revelation that Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous fictional detective, was a _real_ person who had _really_ existed, and that he was now standing on her bedroom rug, she could finally see him for who he truly was. Arrogant or not, this man was a legend, a hero who still had countless fans over a century after he had gone. Maggie herself had adored him since she was little more than a child, and she was mortified by the way she had spoken to him.

"I _am_ a brat," she said in a low voice.

He turned to her with a sigh. "Forgive me, I did not mean—"

"No, Holmes, you were right." She looked down at her feet, unable to meet his piercing gaze. "For almost half my life, I've thought about what it would be like to meet you. At the time, of course, I assumed you were just a fictional character, but still... you were always one of my heroes. And now I actually _get_ to meet you, and what do I do? I completely blow it by snapping at you." She shook her head in bitter self-reproach. "I'm so sorry. I'm such an idiot."

After a moment's hesitation, Holmes came forward and stood before Maggie, his hand hovering near her shoulder. "Come now, my dear," he said kindly. "You mustn't be too hard on yourself. After all, your outburst was not unprovoked. Indeed, I must apologize, as well. I was certainly not raised to speak to a woman that way."

Maggie wondered how such a harsh, strident voice could be capable of being so gentle. She looked up at him, sufficiently humbled. "You're forgiven, if I am," she said.

"In that case, we are both absolved."

She rose to her feet and offered him a weak smile. "And I'm very honored to meet you, Mr. Holmes," she said sincerely.

Her frank, candid admiration succeeded in eliciting a reluctant smile from the reserved detective, and Maggie was caught entirely off guard by it. His smile was so genuine and disarming and so unexpectedly fetching that she quite forgot how to breathe.

"It is my pleasure, truly, Miss Hill," he said.

"Maggie," she said automatically.

"Maggie," he relented, inclining his head. "To be perfectly honest, I am simply glad to have someone to talk to at last." His smile faded too soon. "God knows I have been alone with my thoughts for long enough."

She watched as his eyes took on a far-away, abstracted look. "Can I ask you a question?" she ventured mildly.

Holmes turned to her, confused. "Did you not just do so?" he asked with a frown.

"_No,_" she said, exasperated. Then she winced, remembering to lower her voice. "Not _that_ question. I meant to say — may I ask — oh, good Lord." She tried again. "How did you... deduce all that stuff about me?"

His smile returned, as she had hoped it would. "Ah, that. It was really very simple. Your occupation, I believe, had something to do with education. I noticed a number of crude color drawings affixed to what I assume to be some sort of sophisticated icebox. They were clearly the work of small children, and they all depicted the same subject: you. Your distinctive red hair was instantly recognizable," he added off-hand. "Hence the inference that you must be a teacher."

"Teacher's aide," she admitted. "But close enough. And I understand how you figured out I was unmarried, and have no pets, but..." She cleared her throat uncomfortably. "How did you know I hate my family?"

"That, I confess, was a bit of a stretch," he said. "As I looked over your rooms, I saw several photographs of your friend surrounded by what was obviously her family, and yet I saw none of yours. From that I concluded that, either you had no family, or you did not wish to be reminded of the family you have."

He always made it seem so obvious. "I see," she murmured, not looking at him.

"Was there anything else which was still unclear to you?" he asked politely.

She smiled slightly. "No, thank you. Except..." She met his stormy gray eyes. "Why is it that I'm the only one who can see you?"

At this Holmes began to pace again, his dark brows knitted. "That, my dear girl, is a very good question," he said in a cool, almost detached tone. "One I have been asking myself ever since you first heard me inside that shop. The unfortunate truth of the matter is, I do not know. I have no notion why you should be able to see and hear me, and not the countless other men and women who have picked up my old lens over this past century."

As he spoke, Maggie began to sense that something important had somehow been implied by his words, some bigger truth that she couldn't quite grasp. But she knew it had to do with her. There was something about her that had allowed her to see what everyone else could not... or _would_ not.

"Why me?" she whispered. "What's so different about me?"

If Holmes heard her, he gave no sign. He raised his hand to his mouth as if to bite his nails, but evidently realized there was nothing of substance to chew on and lowered it again.

"Hey, what's the deal with that magnifying glass, anyway?" Maggie asked as she folded her legs underneath her. "Why are you linked with it?"

"I do not know," he replied, distracted.

"And how did it end up in that antique shop to begin with?" she wanted to know. "It seems unlikely that anyone who knew you would ever get rid of it."

He shook his head. "I do not know that, either."

"You know," she said huffily, "for having such an analytical mind, you don't seem to _know_ much of anything."

She instantly regretted her little remark, but to her surprise Holmes turned to her with a dry smile. "I'll have you know, I am well aware of it," he said. "However, if you have any explanations, do share them with me, won't you?"

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry, uncalled for. Well then," she said, patting the bed beside her, "sit down and tell me what you _do_ know."

For a moment Holmes regarded her warily. But he did as she requested, seating himself primly on the edge of the bed, which did not give as much as a creak under his nonexistent weight.

"Now," she resumed, folding her hands in her lap, "what do you remember?"

He arched his elegant eyebrows. "Remember?" he repeated.

"Yeah. How much do you recall about what happened between... Switzerland, and right now?" She was careful not to make any mention of death or dying, for fear of setting him off again.

Holmes tapped his bottom lip thoughtfully with a long, nervous finger. "What do I remember," he murmured. "I remember Reichenbach." Maggie nodded encouragingly. "I remember Watson... I remember he was called away. I allowed him to be deceived by an obvious ploy to separate him from me." He shook his head. "I was acting in the interests of his own safety, but I highly doubt he came to see it that way."

Maggie nodded again. She knew the story well; at least, when she'd assumed it was only a story. "What else?"

"I remember..." Holmes' face suddenly darkened. "Moriarty."

The detective uttered the dreaded name with such icy loathing, such sheer animal hatred that Maggie felt an involuntary shudder pass through her. She had forgotten until now the pure enmity that had existed between him and the criminal mastermind.

"He confronted me at the falls," he continued. His voice was low and cold. "It was a desperate last resort, and we both knew it. I had brought his entire organization crumbling down around his ears. He had nothing left but a mad, unquenchable desire for revenge. More than anything, he wanted me dead, even at the cost of his own life." His shoulders sagged, as if under some invisible burden. "He was... gracious enough to permit me to scribble a final message to Watson, and then without warning, he came at me with a strength I should hardly have expected of him — strength borne, I suppose, of inhuman rage."

His voice had sunk to hardly more than a whisper. "There was a struggle... some stones came loose under my feet, and then we were falling, the both of us. I heard his scream, above even the roar of the water... and then nothing." He gave a soft, humorless laugh. "It seems he got what he wanted, after all."

Maggie stood up abruptly and walked over to her window, her hand over her mouth. As she had been listening to Holmes' composed retelling of his own death, she had suddenly felt her throat close up and her vision begin to blur. The first time she had read _The Final Problem_, she had, frankly, thrown the book across the room and wept like a child. But hearing it again, from her poor martyred detective's own lips, was somehow even worse. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying.

But as Sherlock Holmes missed nothing, her feminine demonstration did not go unnoticed. He rose and came toward her, and she felt his eyes on her. "Are you all right?" he asked hesitantly. "...Maggie?"

"I'm fine," she said tightly. "What happened next?"

Holmes frowned at her, but did not press the matter. "Er... nothing," he stated simply. "Or at least, I do not remember anything after that. Not for a long time."

That succeeded in bringing Maggie out of her maudlin thoughts. "If you don't remember, how do you know it was a long time?" she asked.

Either he did not hear her question, or, as she suspected, he deemed it irrelevant. "The next thing I recall was that I was in some sort of antique seller's shop. I tried to leave, but something held me back. When I questioned the people who came and went, no one ever answered... no matter how much I shouted. It was as if I was invisible." His carved features were lined with anxiety, and Maggie felt another pang. "When a woman walked straight through me, that of course quite confirmed it. It was not long until I realized it was my lens, which I could not even pick up, that was holding me there. And so I waited, for decades, it seems... until you came."

Now his voice took on an entirely different tone, a hushed, almost reverent quality that made Maggie more than a little uncomfortable. "I do not know what made me speak to you," he said softly. "I had long since given up trying to reach anyone. But when you picked up my lens, there was something... different... and I started to hope. I cannot explain it." His eyes met hers, and they were positively luminous. "You are the first one who ever heard me."

Maggie shivered despite herself. "It's like it was meant to be," she murmured. Holmes knitted his eyebrows, but said nothing. She drifted over to her wingchair and sat down, staring thoughtfully into space. "So now what?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what happens now?" she said, looking up at him expectantly. "What's going to happen to us? Are we just going to be stuck together, forever?"

Holmes sighed at her barrage of questions as he came to stand beside her chair. "I'm afraid I do not know that, either," he replied.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, what _do_ you know?"

His thin lips suddenly curved in faint amusement. "I _do_ know," he said wryly, "that you should keep your voice down, lest your friend should accuse you of talking to yourself."

At first Maggie cringed at her own carelessness, but at seeing Holmes' smile, she couldn't help letting out a small chuckle and thinking, _maybe_, this could almost be fun. "Frankly, I'd rather let her think that, than tell her the truth."

This was evidently the wrong thing to say; his smile faded, and his expressive face grew troubled. "Oh, dear," he muttered. "I fear my presence will complicate things tremendously for you, Maggie."

She stood hastily, quite forgetting she had been absolutely terrified of him the night before. Back then he had just some freak in her room; now she had her very own Great Detective all to herself. "No, no, don't even worry about it," she said reassuringly. "It'll all work out, trust me. And anyway, I really don't mind. I mean, you're Sherlock Holmes! This is a dream come true for me. Besides," she added, somewhat bashfully, "meeting you like this is better than not at all."

"Well, well..." He waved his hand dismissively. "You're very kind, my dear." But he did not smile again.

Maggie bit her lip, worried that she had offended him. She started to put her hand on his arm, then remembered it would have been pointless, anyway. Standing there and feeling totally inept, she blurted it out before she could help herself. "He didn't win, you know."

He turned toward her. "Who?" he asked, frowning.

"Moriarty," she said in a low voice.

Gazing down at her for a long moment, Holmes' harsh face softened into the beginnings of affection. "No, my girl," he replied quietly. "No, he did not."

* * *

**I know I said something would actually happen in this chapter. Just kidding, apparently! Well, I had to explain what had happened to Holmes. You had to know what he knew. I totally promise the real plot will start soon. But honestly, I'm having so much fun pitting Holmes against a smart-mouthed girl, it's not even funny. But they're going to be the best of friends. Can't you tell? Anyway, I'll shut up and get to work on chapter five. Also, I'd love a review.**

**-Bix**


	6. Not Entirely Devoid of Interest

**Wow, sorry about the delay. Writer's block is a weird thing, I've found. One minute you have a good idea, then it sucks royally, and you can't write anything good. Then suddenly your writer's block is gone, and you write a whole chapter in a day. But I digress! Thank you so much for all your lovely reviews. I'll probably never write anything that isn't a Sherlock Holmes fanfiction **_**ever**_**. You guys are just way too nice. And now for something totally different for a change: the story from Holmes' point of view.**

**Oh, I don't own Holmes. Rub it in, why don't you, estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle?**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Five, or Not Entirely Devoid of Interest

For the first time in many hours, Maggie Hill slept soundly. She was not robbed from her rest by airplanes or intruders or distressing dreams. Her mind was untroubled and her face peaceful as the night melted slowly into morning.

In the rosy light of early dawn, Sherlock Holmes watched the girl as she slept, serenely oblivious to the confusion and resentment and discomfort that battled each other within his mind. There were so many things he did not understand, so many questions without answers. And if there was one thing Holmes could not suffer easily, it was a question without an answer.

He could not fathom, for one, why this had happened to him. Being a thoroughly scientific man, he had always firmly believed that when a person died, that was the end of him; he simply ceased to exist. There was no perfect bliss of heaven, or blazing inferno, or some transitory condition between the two. And yet, over a full century after he should have perished, here he was. Why?

_Why_ had he been forced to remain for so long — punished, as it were, to an eternity alone... until now?

And why had that suddenly changed? Just when Holmes had at last resigned himself to a state of unending solitude, someone had heard him. And not just anyone — a _girl_. This slim, freckled slip of a girl had walked in with her fiery curls and her absurd green scarf and her alarmingly tight trousers and had changed everything. What made her, of all people, so drastically different that _she_ had heard his voice, that _she_ could see him now?

And why did it have to be a _girl?_

Shaking his head to himself, Holmes examined her in his minute, impersonal way. Magnolia Hill. A picturesque name for a very colorful person. But no; Maggie did suit her better. One might call her pretty, he reasoned objectively. With her long, curly red hair, her delicate face and full lips, and her pleasing figure, he doubted that she would remain unmarried for long. _Yet another complication,_ he thought blackly.

More important than her looks, of course, was her mind. His initial impressions were that, for a woman, she had obviously a fairly good head on her shoulders. At the least, she was not entirely obtuse. Though she had been badly frightened by his sudden presence in her life, she had listened to his explanation and, being unable to deny it, had accepted it with little protest. But not without any protest, he was satisfied to note; it seemed she was, like himself, a born skeptic. Perhaps over time she could be trained to use that brain of hers for something of more practical value than the education of children.

But... why a girl?

Holmes' quick eyes darted toward the clock on the wall: a quarter past six. Well, that was quite enough sleep for such a clearly resilient youth.

Slowly, he leaned over the enormous bed, repressing any notions of impropriety or ungentlemanly behavior. It was inescapably evident that he would be with this girl for a very long time, so it was really no use being uncomfortable about her sex. The best course of action was simply to ignore it completely.

"Maggie," he said softly. Her smooth forehead wrinkled a bit, but she did not wake. He tried again, more strongly. "Maggie." Then perhaps a little too strongly. "Maggie!"

"Aaah, what!?" She shot upright, her small hands clutching the bedclothes in panic. Then her sage green eyes focused on him, and her shoulders slumped. "Oh." She rubbed her eyes sleepily. "What is it? Something wrong?"

What could be wrong? He was only an incorporeal being incapable of even the most menial task. "No, no, no reason for alarm," he said, attempting to quell his frustration for her sake. "But I do believe you promised me last night that you would bring me up to date on what I have missed during the past... hundred years or so."

Maggie sat up and blinked at him. "Now?" She glanced at the clock. "It's not even six-thirty."

Holmes took it as a good sign that she did not seem too terribly annoyed. Perhaps it had something to do with her obvious hero worship of him... a fact of which he might possibly take advantage. "I am aware of the time," he said patiently. "However, I thought that a relatively early hour would be the best time for it, while your Negro friend is still asleep. We do not want to rouse her suspicions."

The girl was suddenly groaning in exasperation. "Oh, my God, Holmes! We do _not_ say Negro anymore!"

"Forgive me, I did not realize. You see? I am clearly in need of a good twenty-first century education."

Maggie rolled her eyes — most disrespectfully, in his opinion — but did not bother to hide a smile. "Fine, you win," she said. "But remind me to include in our lessons an exhaustive course on racial etiquette."

He nearly mentioned that there was little point in teaching him decorum when she was the only person who would ever see or hear him anyway, but he did not wish to belabor the point at the moment. There would be plenty of time to clear everything up. _All the time in the world,_ he thought grimly.

With a very unrestrained yawn, Maggie stretched her arms toward the ceiling. "All right," she said, sound much more alert. "Where should we start?" Holmes opened his mouth to reply, but it seemed the question was rhetorical. "Probably the first thing to do," she continued, "is to get you caught up on all the new technology that's been invented. Once you're familiar with that, you can just learn about what's happened since you d— I mean, since you've been out of commission?" She smiled nervously at his challenging look. "Anyway, you can just use the Internet or watch the History Channel or something."

"Well, I am sure all of that will mean something to me eventually," Holmes said briskly, stepping back from the bed in the hope that she would pick up on his movement and get up at last. "Meanwhile, I am eager to, as you say, catch up. Shall we begin?"

"Certainly!" Holmes could not successfully conceal his mingled surprise and amusement as Maggie literally rolled herself off the high bed and onto her feet, clad in the ludicrous blue-and-yellow striped nightclothes she had chosen the night before. Between her sleepwear and the other two ensembles he had seen her in, Holmes could not but wonder if she was one of those unfortunate individuals who could not see color. Yet her sensible furnishings would indicate otherwise. More than likely, she simply suffered from extremely unconventional tastes.

"Let's see, where'd my cell phone get to?" she mused cryptically, wandering around the room in her bare feet. "Aha!" She plucked from her highboy dresser a slim metallic object, which she opened rather like a book. Incredibly, the object began to emit a strange glow.

Holmes stepped close to Maggie as she held it out. On closer inspection, it was encrusted with tiny numbered keys. "This is a telephone," she said. "Well, technically it's a cellular telephone. What you do is, you dial a series of numbers, and it connects you with the owner of that number. Basically, you can instantly talk to anyone else who has one."

"Indeed?" Holmes examined the device, mystified. "That is remarkable. How precisely does it accomplish this?"

Maggie gave a sheepish laugh. "You're talking to the wrong girl, I'm afraid. I'm a glorified baby-sitter, not an electrician. But from what I can remember, it turns sound into an electrical signal, then sends the signal through some wires — or in the case of a cell phone, through radio waves in the air — and it comes out as sound again on the other end." She shook her head. "It's kind of crazy, when you really think about it."

"You fill me with interest," said Holmes, wondering privately why his remark should bring such a huge smile to the girl's face. "Would it be possible to give me a demonstration?"

She winced. "I don't know, it's still pretty early. But I'll show you later, I promise."

This satisfied Holmes, at least for the present. "Very well," he replied. "Then perhaps you can tell me about this machine over here."

Maggie followed the direction in which he was pointing, until her gaze fell on the object in question. "Oh, that's a cd player."

He frowned. "Pray, what makes it seedy?" he asked.

"No, no. C.D. It stands for compact disc. Here, I'll show you." Maggie strode over to a stack of thin, flat, square things and began sorting through them, muttering to herself. "The Clash, the White Stripes, Beck, Oingo Boingo... Oh no, these will never do." Holmes wondered disconnectedly if he would ever be able to understand what this child was saying.

"Here we are, the Treasury of Classical Music." Holmes looked up sharply as she held up one of her compact discs between her thumb and forefinger. It caught the light in a dazzling prism. "What would you like to hear? Mozart? Brahms? Schubert?"

"Do you mean to tell me..." Holmes came over and peered closely at the reflective, ring-shaped disc. "This 'cd' somehow reproduces sound? Like a phonograph?"

At this Maggie grinned, displaying neat rows of small, pearlescent teeth. "Kind of. Only way, way better."

As he watched curiously, she pressed a button somewhere on the machine, which in response spat out a little tray clearly designed to receive these so-called cds. She placed it in the tray, pressed the button again, and the tray retreated into the machine, disc and all. It gave several little whirring, mechanical sounds, and then there was music.

Pure, glorious music issued forth, with stunningly beautiful clarity the likes of which he had never heard from any phonograph. It was as if he had been transported back to London, to the Royal Albert Hall, and was standing before the very orchestra as it played the Overture to Mozart's _The Marriage of Figaro_. Each note was agony, piercing and yet sweet all at once. Holmes stood transfixed, his eyes shut and his lips slightly parted, as he simply let the music sweep over him.

Suddenly the music stopped, and Holmes quickly opened his eyes. Maggie was staring at him oddly, biting her lower lip and blushing slightly. "Sorry," she blurted. "I didn't want to wake up Thea."

Holmes cleared his throat, knowing technically he had no literal throat to clear. "No need to apologize," he replied, mentally chastising himself for getting so carried away. _Still..._ "It has been a very long time since I heard music," he said softly. "Thank you, Maggie."

The girl's blush deepened. "You're welcome, Holmes." She fidgeted with her hands for a moment, not meeting his gaze. "Anyway, come on. Let me show you the rest of our fabulous modern innovations."

Maggie led the way around her small apartment, showing Holmes one astonishing device after another. There was a black box with a glass window which displayed moving pictures of people, in some cases at the very instant they were being "filmed" on the other end, as Maggie put it. There was another device with a smaller window — a monitor, it was called — along with a typewriter of sorts, which was used for gaining information on any subject imaginable through some vast system called the Internet. There were still other inventions, some for keeping food cold, some for heating it in mere seconds. One device was even engineered for the sole purpose of toasting bread.

As Maggie explained each object and its function, Holmes could not help but marvel at man's ingenuity. A hundred years was not so long a period of time as it sounded, when compared with human history in general. He could see now that very little had been different in terms of technology between the era of Elizabeth and that of his own queen. But the twenty-first century was so radically different, so extraordinarily advanced. How could technology have come so far in so little time?

"So that's what a vacuum cleaner does," Maggie was saying. "Fascinating, I know. I'd turn it on, but Thea would wonder what the heck I was doing vacuuming at this hour."

"I'm sure it is not necessary, thank you," Holmes said absently. "Tell me, my girl. Those automobiles I saw on the televisor—"

"Television."

"—Yes, the television. They were very unlike the clumsy, top-heavy contraptions I read about in my time." _In my time,_ he thought, reflecting on the absurdity of the phrase. But it was indeed as if he had stepped forward in time. "Do you own one of those motorcars?"

Maggie laughed. "If you can call a battered, vomit-green Chevy Nova a motorcar. I call it just plain fugly."

"I am unfamiliar with that particular adjective," he said, frowning.

The girl laughed again — a sound which was beginning to rather grow on Holmes. "Never mind." Her eyes lit up, as if at some sudden revelation. "Hey, I know! Give me a little time to take a shower and get dressed, and I'll take you for a spin."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know, a ride in my car. What do you say?"

Holmes dwelt on the idea briefly. "I believe I would enjoy that."

"Yay! Okay, I'll only be a few minutes. Well, more like half an hour. Maybe forty minutes. Forty-five at the most."

"For heaven's sake, girl—"

"I'm going!"

Holmes shook his head as Maggie raced off to the washroom. As he walked past on his way to her room, he could just hear the girl humming _The Marriage of Figaro_ over the sound of running water. She had an unexpectedly lovely contralto voice, with surprising range and control. He smiled wryly to himself as he remembered the rules she had set out the night before — her privacy rules, she had called them.

"You are never to come in this bathroom, unless the door is open," she had told him sternly. "Two women live here, after all — I'm _so_ sorry, by the way — and you'd never want to breach their privacy, would you? You're far too much of a gentleman. So unless the door's open, or I give you permission, which I do not foresee happening, it's absolutely off-limits, got it?"

As if he would ever have a reason or desire to do so in the first place, he mused with a derisive snort as he returned to her room — to which he was welcome at any time, she'd said. Still, the girl had been very eloquent as well as animated on the subject, which he had found highly amusing.

_Quite the little puzzle, this Maggie Hill,_ he thought as he perused the collection of books on her shelves. (Little, incidentally, was the very word for the girl; her curly head barely reached his shoulders.) Holmes had never been one for reading much of anything but true crime annals and the agony columns, except of course for Shakespeare, Goethe, and a few choice others. Yet here was an obvious American with a bookcase stuffed with English literature: the Bard was here, as well as Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, along with several novelists whose names he recognized, such as Dickens, Stevenson, Brönte, Austen, and many more. What was this preoccupation with England, he wondered, in a girl from Maryland?

More importantly, why did she desire to teach children, and yet have no desire to be reminded of her own childhood? Why, even though she was clearly good-natured, would she freely admit to hating her own flesh and blood? Just who _was_ this girl?

It was odd, and mildly disconcerting, but Holmes regarded Maggie's sudden company as an almost pleasant development. At the very least, it was a welcome change from his long years of solitude. He supposed he was fortunate in that it had happened now instead of a century ago, when women had been even more unreasonable and irrational. A lady of his time would have certainly run screaming from him by now, but Maggie... well, she was positively _friendly_ to him.

As he pondered over why this might be, his eyes suddenly lighted on the spine of a certain book bearing his own name, and he had his answer. "_The Complete Sherlock Holmes_, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," he read to himself. Unconsciously, he attempted to pull out the volume, but it proved more solid than his hand. He frowned, letting his arm fall to his side.

He should have known. This was no doubt why Maggie had been so hospitable to him. Her admiration for the famous detective she had read about was evidently keeping her from being rude or hostile, as she might have done, had he been anyone else. It was little consolation, but he supposed he should be thankful that Watson's fanciful scribblings had endured this long.

At this thought he experienced an unwelcome pang of guilt. _Watson..._

A female throat was cleared behind him, and Holmes turned to see Maggie in the doorway. She was wrapped in a thin, light blue dressing-gown which embraced her feminine curves, and her long red hair was dripping. Quite unexpectedly, he was struck by her slender, sylphlike beauty. _Damnation,_ he thought angrily, momentarily unable to speak.

"Mind if I get dressed?" she asked.

"Of course," he replied. Stupidly. "I mean, no. That is — forgive me." He moved to leave, unsure with whom he was angrier: her, for being a woman, or himself, for his failure to remain indifferent to it.

"You can stay there, just keep your back turned."

Holmes was scandalized. "I will certainly not! The very idea—"

"Fine, but are you going to be all stuffy and stand on ceremony like this, every day? For the rest of my life? That could get pretty tedious. Not to mention inconvenient."

He suppressed a growl and turned to face the bookcase again. "This is hardly proper," he muttered. He could vaguely see the logic in what she was saying. Yet all the same, this situation may very well be even more problematic that he had predicted it would be. Especially if she continued to look that way, with beads of water clinging tenaciously to her eyelashes...

"Proper schmoper," he heard her say nonsensically. "There's proper, and then there's just preposterous. I know you're a gentleman, and I trust you. Fair enough?"

"I suppose," he said dubiously, wondering why he felt mildly flattered by her compliment.

His gaze fell inevitably on her collection of books again. "Maggie," he said, "have many people in this century read Watson's memoirs?"

"Oh, yeah. And everyone knows who Sherlock Holmes is, even if they _haven't_ read them. Which is weird, in my opinion. You and Watson are pretty much famous; although no one believes you actually existed. Except for a few crazies... and me, of course." A small laugh. "Sorry, no offense. But it's generally agreed that the stories were written by Doyle."

Holmes shook his head almost imperceptibly. "No, no... Doyle was merely Watson's literary agent. He worked for the _Strand Magazine_, if I am not mistaken... A peculiar man."

Another laugh. "He'd have to be, to be duped by a couple of little girls into believing in fairies. Then again, look who I'm saying this to."

Her hand reached past him to pull out the book, and he saw that she was dressed in a snug yellow shirt and another pair of those embarrassingly tight trousers. Her hair was still damp, and a few wavy strands stuck to her freckled face.

"Watson's stories unfortunately stopped after what happened in Switzerland," she said in a low voice.

This bit of news did not surprise Holmes. His emotional friend would have undoubtedly found it painful to dwell on their past cases together, let alone put them down on paper. Holmes wished the doctor could have learned to be more detached, for his own sake. It would have saved him a great deal of distress in the end.

"Hey, how old are you, anyway?"

He looked up at Maggie, wondering why it even mattered. "If it is indeed 2007, then I am one hundred and fifty-three."

"Hilarious. Side-splitting, even." Maggie shook her head in patient long-suffering. "Then that means you were born in... 1854?" He nodded, and she furrowed her brow in thought. "Then when you dieee... I mean, when _that_ happened, you would have been... Hang on, I'll get it... thirty-seven?"

"Correct."

Her gaze dropped to the book in her hands. "Thirty-seven," she said sadly. "That's so young."

"Not so young as you, dear child," he pointed out, trying his best to be kind.

"I know, but still..." Her lowered eyelashes could not quite conceal the sorrow in her eyes. "Anyway, sorry. I'm taking forever."

Holmes frowned as she scurried off to make herself presentable. Her moods were certainly many and varied, he decided.

She left the bathroom door open as she applied cosmetics to her face and used a noisy device to dry her abundant hair, unaware that Holmes was watching her easy movements. _She has already become accustomed to my presence,_ he thought with an odd sort of conviction. _She has completely accepted this entire, absurd situation. Can it really be so easy?_

Finally she sprang up from the mirror with a smile. "All right, let's go," she said.

_At last,_ he thought as he accompanied her to the door. As he moved to follow her outside, however, he found he could not even budge. "What the deuce?" he muttered to himself.

"Oh, duh! The magnifying glass!" Maggie ran back to her room and returned with his old lens, which she stowed in the bag she wore slung over her shoulder. "Sorry about that, Holmes. Shall we?"

He hesitantly followed her out the door and down a series of stairs without incident. As they emerged onto the street, Holmes was rendered motionless by the sight which greeted him. Motorcars rushed up and down the busy lane with incredible speed, and people dressed even more bizarrely than his companion walked by, absorbed in their own affairs. Small trees punctuated the street, and the sky... Good lord. How long had it been since he had seen the sky?

"Holmes! Come on, my car's this way."

Maggie led him to a covered area, where an automobile of an impressively hideous shade of green sat waiting. "Man," she said with a rueful chuckle. "I need to stop shouting and gesticulating to invisible people in public." She turned a key in the right-hand door and opened it. "Detectives first."

He took a step forward, but then stopped, observing the dainty girl as she stood beside the giant metal behemoth. The juxtaposition struck him as inexplicably comical, and he couldn't quite hold back a bark of laughter.

"What's so funny?" she demanded, one hand fisted on her hip.

Holmes shook his head, knowing she would not understand even if he could explain. Instead he strolled forward, feeling almost mischievous. "It strikes me as ironic," he remarked, "that even in this advanced society, it still takes an eternity for a woman to get herself ready."

Maggie smirked. "Har, har, har. Get in the car."

* * *

**Aww, they're both so cute! To me, anyway. Holmes is unfortunately mistaken about the reason why Maggie is nice to him, but that's just because, in Holmes' mind, there has to be a reason for everything. People can't be nice for no reason. What annoys me is that in a lot of Sherlock Holmes fanfictions I've read in which there's a modern female protagonist, she's inevitably this sassy, smart-mouthed brat who is completely rude to Holmes. Even in Laurie R. King's series, if you've read them, Russell is extremely disrespectful to him. I know he isn't always easy to get along with, but how could you be a jerk to Sherlock Holmes? I know I couldn't. That's why I've tried to make Maggie an agreeable host to him. Because if any of us were in her situation, I like to think we'd be nice to him, too. Anyway, I'm done rambling. Thanks for reading thus far, and please review if you'd be so kind!**

**-Bix**

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	7. The World Is Full of Obvious Things

**Once again, I apologize profusely for the delay. I assure you, I have not forgotten about this story, or your kindness and the diligence of your reviews. Over a hundred reviews, are you kidding me? I really don't think this story is worthy of a hundred reviews. But I'm touched, and honored, all the same. And now I'll stop being schmalzy. Here's the next chapter at last.**

**Holmes belongs to Doyle. Anyone you don't recognize belongs to me.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Six, or, The World Is Full of Obvious Things

The olive green Nova cruised down Charles Street, and Maggie tried to keep a straight face as she showed her driving companion the best of what Baltimore had to offer. She knew her way around fairly well, a result of living in the city her entire life, and she weaved competently through the busy streets, unperturbed by the heavy traffic.

Holmes, however, was far from unaffected. And understandably so, she thought with no small amount of sympathy. This was a man who had grown up in a world of horse-drawn carriages rattling over cobblestoned streets. The fastest machine he had ever traveled in was a train, and those were hardly alarming. To be screaming down the road at breakneck speeds in this metal deathtrap, surrounded on all sides by other drivers — many of whom had no business behind the wheel — must have been a waking nightmare.

Still, it was hard not to be amused by the sight of the Great Detective sitting rigid as a board in the passenger seat of her car, his jaw visibly tightened and his fists clenched in his lap. He was doing his best not to appear terrified, but it was written in every line of his deceptively neutral face. Poor guy.

"So there's the Washington Monument," she said, indicating the tall column to their left, though it was pretty hard to miss. "The _original_ Washington Monument, not the one in D.C. Actually, Mount Vernon, where we are now — the neighborhood I live in — is named after the place where George Washington was born. I think?" She laughed. "Sorry, I'm a sucky tour guide."

She braked hard to avoid a group of jaywalking teenagers, and Holmes inhaled sharply through his teeth. "I'm not sure I know what 'sucky' means, but I'll assume it has negative connotations."

"How about 'woefully inadequate'?"

"Ah, I see. In that case, I assure you, you're doing quite well. I have never seen so much of one city in so short a time."

The way he said this made it seem suspiciously like a crack about her speed, but Maggie chose to take it as a compliment. She continued by a circuitous route toward downtown Baltimore, pointing out the art museum and Druid Hill Park, where she had taken her last class on a field trip to the zoo, and where she privately believed she'd had more fun than the children did.

"Oh, there's the Lyric Opera House," she said as they passed a large, opulent structure on Mount Royal Avenue. "I'll take you there someday, if you like. I bet it's been a long time since you went to the opera."

"Indeed it has," Holmes replied. "Far too long, in fact." He looked over at her in mingled surprise and disbelief. "Would you... really take me, Maggie?" There was a faintly hopeful tone in his voice.

"Well... sure! I mean, it'll be a little weird for me to go by myself, but that's okay. At least I wouldn't have to pay for your ticket."

Holmes smiled, and his hands finally unclenched. "It is very kind of you."

"Pshaw, my dear boy," she said, smiling back, "it's the least I can do."

She glanced over at him as she drove, glad to see he was unwinding at last. As she did so, she noted that there were many things about Holmes' appearance that Watson had never mentioned; little details that a writer would never think to bother with, especially if that writer were accustomed to seeing them every day. Like the fact that Holmes' nails were bitten off almost down to the quick, a fact which by no means marred the statuesque elegance of his hands — hands any artist or musician would envy. Nor had Watson ever mentioned the small vertical crease between his dark eyebrows, a clear mark of his perpetual concentration of thought. Then, too, there was the fact that his grin, rare a sight as it was, revealed that his canine teeth were slightly on the pointy side, lending it a decidedly devilish quality.

No, it had never occurred to Watson to record these details, and perhaps they were ultimately unimportant. But to Maggie, it was these little things that made Holmes that much more real. That much more Holmes.

And she was the only one who knew. The thought saddened her.

"Crud, did we already pass Cathedral? Oh, well. Anyway, the symphony hall's back that way." She reached across him and pointed with her right hand. Holmes instinctively shot out his arm and tried to grab hers, but his grasp met with nothing solid. Maggie let out a yelp of alarm and withdrew her hand again. "Yikes! What'd you do that for?" she demanded.

"Will you kindly keep your hands at the helm?" he asked peevishly. "This is quite stressful enough without you flailing your arms about. I've no desire to careen headlong into a building."

Maggie had to laugh. "It's called a steering wheel, Holmes, not a helm. And would you relax? What do you have to be stressed about, anyway? It's not like you're going to die." Holmes cast an icy look in her direction, and she winced. "Too soon for jokes, I see."

He continued to glare severely at her. "It is not my own life, or lack thereof, which concerns me."

At this Maggie's smile faded. Everything was clearly implied by what Holmes hadn't said: _'If you were to get yourself killed driving this hellish thing, we both know what would happen to me. And I am not ready to be alone again.'_

Maggie swallowed and directed her eyes straight ahead, her hands at ten and two. "Sorry," she said quietly. "I'll be more careful."

She heard him sigh beside her. "Girl..." The potentially belittling nickname he'd adopted for her was made somehow tolerable by the familiar and almost kind way he said it. "I do not wish to be harsh with you. Understand, this is all a bit much to absorb at once."

"Oh, I know," she answered reassuringly. "I'd say you're handling this extremely well. And don't worry, I don't think you're a grouch. In fact, you're a lot easier to get along with than I thought you'd be."

He smiled wryly. "And you, my child, are uncommonly honest."

"I aims to please," she said with a grin.

Suddenly her purse started singing "The Blitzkrieg Bop", and she fumbled for her cell phone. "Oh, great, now you're _really_ going to hate my driving," she groaned.

"What the deuce is that noise?" asked Holmes, looking around him.

"My phone. Hey, now you'll get to see one being used. Get ready, it's super exciting." She pulled it out and flipped it open, holding it to her ear with her shoulder so that she could keep her hands on the wheel. "Hello?"

"Hey Maggs," came Thea's voice.

"Oh, hi!" She turned to Holmes and mouthed, _'It's Thea.'_

"You must have left _early_ this morning!" her friend exclaimed. "You probably slept too much yesterday. Where are you?"

"I, uhh..." _I should have come up with an excuse already,_ she thought, rebuking herself. "I... went out to get coffee for us. Yay!"

"Yay! Aww, you Nicey McNicerton." Maggie found it hard to ignore the strange look Holmes was giving her. "Well, I hope you didn't already eat breakfast, because I'm making crepes."

"Ooh, _c'est magnifique._ All right, I'll see you in a bit."

As she returned her phone to her purse, Maggie was aware that Holmes was staring at her under knitted brows. "Yes?" she prompted.

"Am I to understand that it is no longer possible to simply brew coffee in one's own home?"

She snorted a laugh. "It's still possible. But it's recently become fashionable to pay grossly exorbitant prices for someone else to brew it for you." She pointed the car back in the direction of Mount Vernon. "I don't usually get coffee out, but I couldn't think of any other reason I'd be out this early." She sighed. "I'm no good at lying, and I'm starting to think I'm going to _have_ to get good at it, as long as you're with me."

"I apologize in advance, then." He contemplated her silently for a moment. "Do you know," he added philosophically, "until now, I was under the impression, formed from my own experience, that women were simply born with an innate talent for dissemblance."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Oh, give it a rest, you dinosaur."

* * *

Zombie Joe's was definitely a hangout for young people, Maggie decided as she and Holmes stepped into the dimly lit coffee house. There were groups of friends in their twenties lazing around with hot cups of espresso, student types sitting in front of newspapers and notebook computers. Black lights shone on posters of spiders and skeletons drinking coffee, and popular, if spooky, music played in the background. Maggie herself had never been to Zombie Joe's, but she'd heard it mentioned more than once in the teacher's lounge, and according to general opinion, they made a good cup of coffee.

As she stood in line to order, Holmes perused the menu with a disapprobation that was almost palpable. "Well, well, inflation is certainly coming along handsomely. What's this? Nearly four dollars for something called a caramel macchiato? I shudder to think what has happened to tea prices." When Maggie shushed him, he peered imperiously down his sharp nose at her. "Forgive me, I was merely making an observation. As I recall, you only forbade me from asking you any questions."

This was true, Maggie had to concede. In fact, she had very specifically requested, before they had entered the coffee shop, that Holmes not ask her anything, lest she forget herself and reply to thin air. In hindsight, she should have just told him to zip it altogether.

She stepped up to the counter, resolved to ignore her commentator. She was greeted by a pleasant, olive-skinned young man. "Good morning! Welcome to Zombie Joe's, home of the Black Magic Mocha. What can I get for you, Red?"

She smiled. "Nothing with a hilariously macabre name today, thanks."

"Not even a Home Lobotomy Latté?" he said hopefully.

At this she burst out laughing. "Especially not that."

"Ah. Well, good, because I made that one up."

She laughed again. "You know, you're far too cheerful for someone who has to work on a Sunday."

The young man shrugged. "It's paying for culinary school, so I don't mind. Plus I get good tips, because I'm incredibly suave."

Holmes was watching this little exchange from under his heavy lids. "I assume you know this boy is besotted with you," he remarked off-hand.

Maggie cleared her throat pointedly. "Culinary school, huh?" she said. "That's cool. My friend Thea's an assistant chef at La Farfalla. You know it?"

"Yeah! I love that place!" He held out his hand. "I'm Niko, by the way. Niko Louverdes."

"Maggie Hill." She shook his hand. "So what's your specialty?"

"Greek food. I know, big surprise, right?" He chuckled. "My life's ambition is to start a classy Greek restaurant. You know, great food without the angry hairy dude taking your order."

Maggie laughed, and Holmes scoffed. "He only just learned your name, and already he is divulging his life's ambition to you. The lad must be under intense pressure to marry."

"Oh my God!" she blurted, turning toward Holmes. Niko raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I, uh..." She smiled sheepishly. "I love this song. This one, the one that's playing."

"Oh. Right." Niko looked at her oddly. "Anyway, what'll it be?"

Maggie sighed inwardly and handed over her money. "Two iced Americanos, I guess. With cream, please."

"Sweet. They'll have it ready in just a minute."

"Thanks," she said flatly as she drifted over to an empty table and sat down. As Holmes came to join her, she shot him an angry look.

"Did I ask you any questions?" She continued to glare at him. "Save that last one?" he amended. "No, I did not. I only made observations."

"Well, reserve your _observations_ for when we're back in the car," she whispered sternly.

"Excuse me," came a sudden voice. Maggie looked up to see a man a few years older than her standing over her table. "Mind if I sit here while I wait for my latté?" he asked.

He seemed harmless, and was attractive in a neatly pressed sort of way. "No, pull up a chair," she replied, paying no heed to Holmes' disapproving frown.

The man thanked her and sat down. "I'm not usually this forward, but... well, I couldn't help but notice that you ordered _two_ Americanos. Please say you don't have a boyfriend, and you're just a hopeless caffeine addict."

She laughed slightly. "Neither, actually. The other's for my roommate."

The man's smile was almost blinding under the ultraviolet lights. "In that case, do you think I could take you out to lunch some time?"

"For God's sake," Holmes burst out in disgust. "The man is obviously married."

Maggie shot out of her chair like she'd been sitting on a tack. "Pardon me a moment," she said in a very neutral tone. Very deliberately, she pulled out her phone and flipped it open, turning away from the man as she held it to her ear.

"What do you mean, he's married?" she hissed under her breath.

Holmes was irritatingly confident. "Oh yes. Look at the third finger of his left hand."

She turned just enough to surreptitiously examine the fingers of the accused. "So he has a tan line from a ring," she said into the phone, her eyes on Holmes. "So what? He may have gotten divorced recently."

The detective raised his eyebrows skeptically. "As recently as this morning? Dear me, he certainly does things quickly."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"His collar!" He threw up his hands in frustration. "Good heavens, girl! I'd rather you were blind than unobservant!"

_That's hardly called for,_ she thought, a little hurt. Nevertheless, she cast a glance at the man's collar. She couldn't see anything remarkable about it, and she sighed. "I give up. What about his collar?"

"The button, my child," Holmes said patiently. "The top button has recently come off and been sewn on again, by an experienced hand. The thread, however, is of a slightly different color than that which was used on the rest — barely distinguishable, but different. Does that suggest nothing to you?"

"It suggests..." Maggie racked her brains for an explanation. "It suggests that it couldn't have been sewn on at a dry-cleaner's or a professional tailor's, because they'd almost certainly have matching thread. So it must've been done by someone who..." Her eyes widened. "Who had to do her best with what she had! He _is_ married!" Her small hand clenched around her phone. "That... hoary marmot!"

"Good girl," said Holmes approvingly.

Maggie snapped her phone shut and whirled on the man. "I just have one question," she said hotly. "What does your _wife_ think about you asking other women to lunch?"

The man paled visibly. "What? I'm not married."

"Right. And I'm not Irish." She pushed in her chair with a sharp crack. "Sorry, but my list of dating disqualifications rules out both married men _and_ man-whores, and you're on the list twice."

Turning contemptuously away, she retrieved her coffees from the counter and stalked out of the shop, slamming the door behind her. "I hope Niko puts laxatives in that guy's latté," she growled.

Holmes stood at her side, not even attempting to hide his amusement. "I suppose not everything has changed, if over-zealous males are still the bane of every poor, pretty young thing," he remarked. "I must say, I am favorably impressed by how quickly you deduced the importance of that thread, Maggie. I fear it would have taken Watson considerably longer."

"I'm flattered," she replied, hoping he would connect her flushed cheeks with his compliment and not with the fact that he had actually deigned to call her pretty. "Now let's go home. Thea's probably wondering what's keeping us — I mean, me."

As she placed the coffees on the roof of her car and contemplated how she was going to let Holmes in without appearing to be opening the door for her imaginary friend, Maggie noticed the detective looking intently over her shoulder. "Holmes?" she inquired quietly. "Is there something wrong?"

His eyebrows were drawn into two hard black lines. "Yes, I believe there is," he said in a hushed tone, though there was no need to be quiet on his part. "There is a man over there pulling a large red suitcase behind him. Turn around, but do not be conspicuous."

Puzzled, Maggie looked slowly over her shoulder. A thin, pale young man was hurrying down the sidewalk, tugging an enormous piece of luggage. There was certainly nothing about him to raise her companion's hackles in such a sudden manner. "I see him," she whispered. "What about him?"

Holmes' reply was like iron in its resolve. "He has just stolen that suitcase."

"Is this sort of thing going to happen every time I take you with me?" Maggie asked exasperatedly.

Her irritation dissolved as she looked up at the detective. He seemed to be crackling with a strange new energy, until his gaunt frame was almost quivering with it. She seemed to remember a passage Watson had once written about Holmes being transformed when he was on a case, and she wondered if this was what the doctor had meant. Whatever it was, it was mildly intimidating, and utterly fascinating, to watch.

"You're sure about this, Holmes?" she asked softly. Which was of course needless; he was always sure.

"Maggie," he said in an impatient tone, his gaze never leaving its target. "Use your eyes. Can you not see that his furtive behavior and posture alone condemn him? However, if you require more substantial evidence, you need only to read the name on the identification tag. Does the man look like an Amy Hauser to you?"

His harsh, sardonic voice was beginning to grate on her. "Okay, okay. I'll trust that you're right. But what are we supposed to do about it?"

"Well, well..." He crossed his arms. "That is the question, is it not? Obviously you cannot attempt to overpower the man, as you are much smaller in stature than he. Nor would I allow you to do so. It would be far too dangerous." Maggie was touched by his unexpected concern, though she could argue that even if she took it upon herself to do such a monumentally stupid thing, Holmes would be quite unable to stop her. "And yet we cannot simply stand by while he escapes. We must act."

Maggie brainstormed for a moment, watching powerlessly as the perpetrator continued on his merry way. "Wait!" Holmes shouted, causing her to flinch. "There was a constable inside the coffee shop! He was not in uniform, but I noticed a law enforcement badge on the waistband of his trousers."

"Is there anything you _don't_ notice?" she asked, unable to hold back a smile of pride. "All right, let's go back in. I don't know _what_ I'm going to say to him."

Leaving her coffees on top of her car, she raced back inside, purposefully ignoring the gaze of the married man who had asked her out. Holmes pointed out a blond, broad-shouldered man in jeans and a blazer, sitting at a corner table, and she dashed over to him. He looked up at her as she cleared her throat.

"Hi," she began hesitantly. "This might sound a little strange, but there's a guy in the parking lot over there, and I think he's stolen a suitcase."

The blond man raised his eyebrows in interest. "Oh?" he said. "What makes you think so?"

She cast a pleading glance at Holmes, but the detective was standing at the window, evidently keeping a diligent eye on his quarry. "Look, it's hard to explain, but he's kind of getting away, so do you think you could just go and ask him about it? Please?" She clasped her hands in supplication.

After what seemed like an eternity passed as the man scrutinized her, he finally rose to his feet, towering over her. "All right, I'll check it out," he answered, tossing his empty cup in the trash bin. "But don't follow me. Stay here, just in case there's any trouble."

She nodded rapidly, standing to one side as he strode swiftly out of the shop. Looking out the window, Maggie mentally willed the police officer to walk faster. He hurried across the parking lot, catching up to the man with the suitcase. With a tap on the shoulder, he stopped him and said something. Though Maggie could not hear what was being said, it was clear that he was inquiring about the suitcase. At once the man broke into a sprint, abandoning the luggage on the sidewalk. The officer easily overtook him, grabbing and handcuffing him with little effort. The entire incident had taken less than a minute.

Maggie could hardly believe what she had just seen. She turned to Holmes, and he simply smiled.

As the policeman walked the man over to a squad car on the far side of the parking lot and shoved him in the back, Maggie slowly ventured outside and shut the door behind her, Holmes close at her heels. Retrieving the suitcase, the officer came back to her, a bemused look on his face.

"You were right," he said. "He'd stolen it from a cab driver who was putting it in the trunk for his fare. How did you know?"

She shrugged with a nervous laugh. "It wasn't a big deal, really," she replied. "The name on the tag was a woman's name. Plus he looked super guilty."

"You saw that from way over here?" He shook his head. "And how'd you know I was a police officer?"

"Oh, from the, uh... badge on your belt." Maggie felt more than a little deceitful for claiming Holmes' good deed.

The policeman smiled. "Well, you've got a good eye, at any rate, Miss...?"

"Hill. Maggie Hill."

"Lieutenant Justin Aldridge." He shook her hand firmly, nearly crushing it. "Nice job, Miss Hill. Ever think about detective work?" Maggie laughed awkwardly, wishing he would just go away. "Do you have a number where we can reach you in case we need an official statement?"

She handed him one of her business cards, and he tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat. "Thank you very much, Miss Hill. I hope you have a wonderful day."

"You too," she said vaguely as he put the suitcase in his car and drove off. She walked to her own car and mechanically opened the door for Holmes without realizing how strange it might have looked. Then she went around to the driver's side and slid in beside him.

For a long moment she simply stared at him in unconcealed admiration. "Holmes," she finally said, "you are amazing."

If Holmes could have blushed, she truly believed he would have. He suddenly found his fingernails endlessly fascinating, and his thin mouth was twitching as if he were trying desperately not to smile. "My dear, ingenuous child, there was nothing at all impressive in it," he said. "I have merely trained myself to notice things. But I thank you all the same for humoring an old hound."

She started the car and pulled out into the street. "I'm just sorry I took all the credit for your work," she said regretfully. "I feel like a total fraud. But I didn't know what else to tell the guy, except, 'My invisible friend Sherlock Holmes is positive about this.' Somehow I don't think that would have gone well."

"No indeed," he replied dryly. "There is no reason to apologize, however. I care nothing for the credit; the work is its own reward. Particularly now, after many long years of painful inaction." He studied her for a moment out of the corner of his eye. "The young lieutenant brought up an interesting notion about detective work, did he not?"

"Well, I told you, I think it's— no, no, no," she said quickly. "I already know where you're going with this. Look, I know you've been alone for a long time, and you're all anxious to get back to work, and I really feel for you. But I can't help you with that."

Holmes leaned toward her in his intensity. "But Maggie, consider," he said earnestly. "Consider what we could accomplish if we worked together."

"Oh, Holmes..."

"We could do this city good, Maggie. Do you not want to help people?"

"Of course I do! But I already _have_ a job. And it's far less stressful than detective work — not to mention less dangerous. The only mystery I have to solve is who forged their parent's signature on their absent slips. And I _like_ it that way. I'd take that over being shot or blown up any day."

Holmes was silent for a long while, simply regarding her with his piercing gray eyes. At last he sat back with a resigned slump to his shoulders. "Yes," he said quietly. "You are right, of course. I could not with a clear conscience allow you to endanger yourself for my sake. It was selfish and improper of me to think of it."

Maggie sighed. "No, it wasn't. You're just restless, that's all." She smiled. "You crave brainwork."

Holmes smiled faintly. There was a short silence between them. Then: "Maggie?"

"Hmm?"

"I believe your coffee is still on the roof of your car."

"Oh, crud!" She slammed unthinkingly on the brakes, and coffee and ice cascaded spectacularly down the windshield.

* * *

**Hahahah... Who saw that coming? Ah, I see. Everyone. Anyway, things are starting to pick up, finally. Or at least, some foreshadowing of things to come. Boy I loved writing this chapter! I hope you loved reading it. Please review before you go-go, and I'll get to work on chapter seven.**

**-Bix**


	8. If Inconvenient Come All the Same

**Let me start by saying, I am ashamed. I have no excuse for my disgusting lack of motivation. I've seen it happen dozens of times on this website: the sudden and complete cessation of updates on a story I was genuinely enjoying. It annoys and upsets me, and I think, "What the heck's the problem? How hard is it to finish a friggin' story?" Well, I'll never say that again. Because I have now committed the very same act that I myself abhor. And I am truly sorry to put you through it. But my shame has moved me to atone for my sins, starting with picking up where I left off. So with no further wallowing in self-denigration(at least for now), here is a new chapter.**

**Disclaimer: Holmes is not mine, but if he was... he'd never see the light of day.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Seven, or If Inconvenient Come All the Same

"'"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs. Whatsit said,'" Maggie read aloud as she sat perched on the edge of the teacher's desk, her feet swinging lazily in the air. The teacher herself, Mrs. Bellows, was elsewhere, for she was usually busy with other tasks and couldn't be bothered with entertaining the students. "'"I just got caught in a down draft and blown off course."'"

Maggie tore her eyes from the book in her hand to glance out over the classroom. A small percentage of her audience seemed to be listening to at least some degree, but the majority were either doodling in their notebooks, struggling to stay awake, or simply staring blankly out the window, counting the minutes until lunch. The fifth-graders were good children, really; they just weren't stellar students. Maggie was doing her best to make the story compelling; she was even reading the character's lines in her creaky, unoiled-gate voice. (Actually, it was more like a really bad Katherine Hepburn impression, but the kids wouldn't know the difference.) They apparently just didn't love the book as much as she had at their age.

As she continued to read, Maggie sensed her own mind beginning to drift, and she found herself wondering what Holmes was doing. Dear, brilliant, infuriating Holmes.

It had been over a month since she had inadvertently brought her spectral companion home along with her stinky foot cheese. At first it had been uncomfortable and inconvenient to have a man around all the time, especially a man as straight-laced and Victorian as Sherlock Holmes. He was like an old grandmother, she had decided. He disapproved of unladylike behavior of any sort. He glared pointedly at her every time he caught her swearing. And she couldn't exactly walk around in a towel, or even a pair of shorts, without Holmes averting his eyes and looking as if he might die all over again from the scandal.

Nevertheless, she had gradually begun to grow used to the constant male presence... and adjusted her wardrobe accordingly. She supposed in some ways it was not unlike a marriage — a marriage to a fuddy-duddy. After all, Holmes had to put up with her idiosyncrasies, just as she had to tolerate his. Not that either of them had much of a choice in the matter, of course. Although she had been driven more than once to the point of threatening to sell his magnifying glass on eBay, they both knew she was never serious. The bottom line was, she could never cast him away.

For if she was being honest with herself, she secretly loved having him around.

Besides, at least she didn't have to feed him or fold his laundry or pick up after him. In some ways it was _better_ than a marriage.

"'"I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way,"'" she read in the croaky Whatsit-voice. "'"Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there _is_ such a thing as a tesseract."'"

Suddenly the bell rang, jolting the children out of their stupor. "All right, off you go to cavort and caper," she said, placing a bookmark in the tattered paperback and setting it aside. "Do not run; _Adam_, I am looking in your general direction. Thank you. We'll have a vocabulary quiz when you get back." There was a chorus of groans as the kids filed out the door. "I know it's rough. Try to enjoy your lunch."

Maggie's sigh echoed through the quiet classroom.

She stood up and meandered through the rows of empty desks, mentally conjuring the image of each child. She knew, without even being told, that some of them did not have a much better home life than she had. That was why it was so important to make school a safe haven, an environment in which the children enjoyed being. This was her third year as Mrs. Bellows' aide at Samuel Chase Elementary, and although there was no way of knowing the difference she might make, she just didn't feel she was doing much good.

Sometimes she almost felt like reconsidering a collaboration with Holmes.

But no. Not really. Not _seriously_. Maybe once or twice, just to envision what it might be like. If nothing else, it would be a good way to keep Holmes occupied. That was perhaps the hardest part of living with the Great Detective. His mind was so lightning-quick, and her own life so painfully and unrelievedly boring, that it was a constant chore to prevent him from sinking into a black depression, which he tended to do if left to himself. It was the first of these instances, when Holmes had been more silent and withdrawn than Maggie had ever seen him, that had nearly reduced her to begging him to go into detective work with her — anything to bring back the smug, sardonic Holmes she knew so well.

For as irritating as the man could be, he could also be extremely charming when the mood seized him. Only the night before, for example, he had dazzled her with his knowledge of Antonio Stradivari, who had made, to her surprise, not just violins, but violas, cellos, guitars, and at least one harp. He had also regaled her with a truly priceless account of a case he had taken before meeting Watson involving a chimney sweep, an engagement ring, and a blind carrier pigeon. He was not proud of the case, he admitted, but he told the story very well. Maggie had been forced to shove her fist in her mouth to avoid waking Thea with her uncontrollable giggling.

At any rate, it was certainly not as bad as Thea's assertion that Maggie would go completely insane if she had to live with him. After all, Watson did it for years and somehow retained his sanity. If anything, the most difficult part of the whole situation was trying to hide the detective's presence from her roommate. More than once, she'd been caught jabbering away to her invisible companion, and had to hastily invent some flimsy explanation for her bizarre behavior. Telling the truth, it went without saying, was out of the question. Even if Thea believed her, which was doubtful, she would blow a gasket if she knew she had been sharing her apartment with a ghost for over a month. And a male one, at that.

The bell rang, and Maggie looked up at the clock. Lunch was over, and the children would now be clamoring out to the playground for recess. Her stomach grumbled in protest, and she regretted leaving her own lunch at home again. With any luck there would be some leftover coffee and muffins in the teachers' lounge.

As she switched off the lights and shut the classroom door, Maggie was greeted by the sound of rubber soles slapping against the tile floors. Surprised, she turned to see one of her students racing up to her, a boy with curly blond hair and absurdly large brown eyes.

"Miss Hill!" he panted. "Hey, Miss Hill, wait up!"

"Hunter," she said as the boy skidded to a halt. "What's the matter, why aren't you at recess? Did you forget something?"

"I can't find Andrew," he answered, out of breath and clearly upset. "We were supposed to sit together at lunch, but he never came."

Maggie frowned in confusion. "Really? That's weird." Hunter Delaney and Andrew Townsend had been best friends since preschool, or so they bragged, and most of the time it was all Maggie could do to keep them quiet during class. "Maybe he wasn't feeling well, and he went home early," she suggested. "Did he say anything about feeling sick?"

Hunter shook his head, unruly curls flying every which way. "No, ma'am. But he did seem kinda distracted, like he was thinking about something else all morning."

"Hmm." Maggie thought for a moment. "Don't worry. I'll go down to the office and see if he went home. Why don't you check all the boys' restrooms and get back to me?"

He nodded and ran off as quickly as he had come. Still frowning, Maggie set off at a swift pace toward the office, wondering why she suddenly felt so inexplicably uneasy.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Maggie, I meant to tell you," the receptionist said, tapping her orange fingernails on her desk. "Andrew had a dentist's appointment this afternoon. His father came to pick him up. I told Mrs. Bellows, but... Yeah. I don't think she was listening."

_No surprise there_, Maggie thought in irritation. As far as she was concerned, no further explanation was needed. Rosalyn Bellows, it was universally known, did not care for her teaching job any more than she cared for the New York Stock Exchange. Most of the time, she allowed her assistant/slave to teach her class while she morosely graded papers and silently bewailed her career choice. It was no shock to learn, therefore, that she had failed to mention to Maggie that one of her own students had a dental appointment.

"No problem, Holly," she said with a sigh. "I should've known. Thanks."

She turned to leave and was intercepted by her diminutive blond Mercury. He was even more winded, and his eyes were wide with distress. "I looked in all the bathrooms, Miss Hill! Andrew's not in any of them!"

"It's okay, Hunter," said Maggie, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I've just talked to Mrs. Ward. She said Andrew came in with a note this morning, excusing him from school. He has a dental appointment today."

This bit of news did not do much to ease Hunter's mind; in fact, it appeared to have the opposite effect. "But we're best friends since preschool!" he insisted. "He would've told me if he had to go to the dentist! He _hates_ the dentist! Mrs. Schroeder has to promise to take him to the arcade afterward every time!"

_I wish I had gotten a trip to the arcade every time I had to go to the dentist_, Maggie thought wryly. "Maybe he just forgot to tell you, because he was nervous. Remember, you said he seemed distracted earlier."

"I guess." Hunter still looked unconvinced.

Maggie put on her most reassuring smile. "Hey, come on. Cheer up. Andrew will be here on Monday, and you can tell him what an awesome vocabulary quiz he missed out on."

Hunter rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right!"

"I know I'm right. Now get back outside before you miss recess entirely."

"Yes, Miss Hill."

"And don't run in the hallway!"

Maggie watched as the boy did his best to walk down the hall until he turned the corner, and his light-speed footsteps could be heard in the echoing corridors. She shook her head with a smile and was about to resume her course toward the teachers' lounge when she heard the receptionist gasp behind her. She paused and turned at the door. "Something wrong?"

"Oh, my God," Holly said in a low voice.

"What is it?"

She began yanking open her desk drawers and rifling through them frantically. "No, no, no, _God_, no..."

Maggie watched her with mounting alarm. "Holly, what's wrong?"

"How could I have forgotten? She was a chaperone last year on one of the field trips!"

"Holly!" she nearly shouted. "A little coherence, please!"

"Andrew's mother!" the woman exclaimed, retrieving a piece of paper from her desk with trembling hands. "Her last name isn't Townsend! It's Schroeder! I ought to have known that, but it completely slipped my mind!"

Maggie shrugged. "So, what's the big deal?"

In reply, Holly stuck out her hand that held the slip of paper and shook it at Maggie. Her heart in her throat, the redhead took the paper and ran her eyes over the scrawled writing.

_Andrew has a dental appointment at noon today. His father will be picking him up. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely, Deborah Townsend._

_Townsend._

A groan escaped Maggie.

"What do we do?" Holly asked in a high-pitched, panic-stricken voice.

Maggie folded and unfolded the handwritten note, hardly aware of what she was doing. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," she found herself saying. "Before we do anything, let's just call Andrew's mother and make sure he's at the dentist. Do we have her daytime phone number?"

"I think so." Holly dashed to the filing cabinet and pulled out some contact information. Hands shaking, she plucked the phone from its cradle and began dialing. After a moment she spoke, clearly trying to keep her voice steady. "Hello, Mrs. Schroeder? Yes, this is Holly Ward at Chase Elementary. I'm sorry for inconveniencing you, but I'm just calling to confirm your son's dental appointment scheduled for this afternoon." There was a pause, and Holly's grip tightened on the receiver. "He didn't. I see."

Maggie began chewing her nails as she listened with growing despair. "Well, there may not be any cause for alarm at this point... but Andrew gave us a handwritten note excusing him from school this afternoon. It stated that his father would be picking him up. Yes. Yes, he was tall, with thinning hair and glasses." Holly passed an unsteady hand over her face. "Your ex-husband."

Her stomach twisting in dread, Maggie watched as Holly's manicured nails dug into her palms. "Mrs. Schroeder, I think you should come down to the school as soon as possible. Yes. I will contact the authorities and explain the situation. All right. We'll see you very soon." She hung up the phone with a loud clatter. For a moment she sat silently, staring ahead of her but not seeing anything.

"Holly?" Maggie touched her shoulder. "Holly, talk to me."

The receptionist looked up at her, her eyes dull with shock. "Andrew's father is an inmate at Baltimore City Correctional Center," she said in a monotone. "Or at least, he was up until last week. He escaped during a prison riot. They've been looking for him since last Saturday."

* * *

Fumbling through her purse with stupid, unresponsive fingers, Maggie finally found her apartment key and inserted it in the lock. As she pushed the door open, she saw her small plastic cooler, still sitting on the kitchen counter where she left it.

"Holmes?" she called, knowing that Thea would not be home to hear her. "Holmes, where are you? Holmes!"

A tall, thin shape emerged from her bedroom, immaculately groomed as always. "Ah, Maggie," he said in a tone of amused reproof. "I see you've returned to collect your lunch, which you've once again neglected to take with you. I saw a rather interesting television program this morning about the human brain. Apparently this peculiarity known as multi-tasking—"

"Where's your magnifying glass?" she asked urgently, cutting him off.

He raised a dark eyebrow. "It is on your nightstand, as you well know, where it has been lying for the past four days. But why on earth—"

"I need it. I need _you_. Come with me, quickly."

Being who he was, it did not take Holmes long at all to realize something was amiss. He followed Maggie as she strode quickly to her bedroom, and she felt his gaze on her as she scooped up his lens and stashed it in her purse.

"Maggie, what has happened?" Holmes asked in a low voice.

She stood very still, not trusting herself to speak. Finally she turned and met his piercing gray eyes. "One of my students is missing," she said quietly.

The detective steadily returned her distraught gaze, before nodding minutely. "I understand."

Upon hearing those two simple words, Maggie felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She was convinced, both from experience and from pure instinct, that this was the best possible course of action. She was putting her trust in the most brilliant investigator in the world. Holmes would do everything in his power to find the child.

"Come on," she said.

On the ride back to the school, Maggie explained the circumstances leading up to Andrew Townsend's abscondment with his fugitive father. Holmes sat slouched in the passenger seat, his knees mere inches from the glove box, his eyes closed. Had anyone else been able to see the man, they would have thought him asleep. Maggie, of course, knew him well enough to know that this was his method of concentration. Besides which, he never slept anyway.

Maggie braked suddenly to avoid running a red light, swearing under her breath in frustration. Holmes seemed not to notice. "This man Townsend," he said, as if to himself. "He escaped the correctional facility on the thirtieth of September. He has been at liberty for five days now, but has chosen not to leave the city. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that he has found a secure hiding place for himself. It is also not too much of a stretch to assume that it cannot be very far away."

"No," Maggie agreed, skirting around an elderly driver in a Buick, "it would have to be relatively close to the school, anyway."

"Precisely. The question at the moment is, would he return to his bolt-hole after taking the child, or would he consider such a course of action too risky, and decide to leave town altogether?"

Maggie thought about this for a while, weighing each option carefully. She tried to put herself in the fugitive's place, imagining what she would do in the situation. "If I were Townsend," she said slowly, "I would stay put. Like you said, it's been five days since he escaped, and the authorities haven't found him yet. So it's obviously a good hiding place he's got. Why not stay there until the man-hunt slackens off a bit?"

As she turned to Holmes to gauge his assessment of her theory, she found him staring at her under his hooded eyelids with an indiscernible expression. "Something wrong?" she pressed.

He shook his head minutely. "No," he said after a slight pause. "Your hypothesis is quite a sound one." He lay back in the seat again, his eyes on the ceiling of the car. "We can only hope it proves correct."

Maggie scrutinized him through narrowed eyes, wondering how he would react to what she was going to say next. She finally decided she didn't care one way or another. It had to be said.

Veering off the road onto the shoulder, she shifted the car into park. Holmes sat up sharply. "Maggie, whatever do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "We haven't a moment to waste!"

"Shush," she said bluntly. She twisted in her seat to face him. "Don't talk. Just listen."

Holmes regarded her severely, but crossed his arms and waited, one eyebrow raised.

She took a deep breath and plunged in. "I've been thinking about our situation a lot, and I've realized that I've been selfish, Holmes. _Incredibly_ selfish. I've put my own wishes first, and completely ignored yours. I've been denying you — denying _everyone_ — of your gift. But that ends right now." _Here goes nothing_, she thought. "I want you to work again."

He opened his mouth, but she wasn't finished. "No, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say that it's too dangerous. I'm well aware of the risks. But they're nothing, when compared with the good you could be doing." She leaned forward in her excitement. "See, I've been thinking about us. About how I found your lens, how I'm the only person who can see and hear you. Obviously there _has_ to be a reason why. And I think it's because I'm supposed to help you. I _know_ you were born to do this, Holmes, and maybe if you keep _on_ doing this..." She shook her head. "I don't know what might happen. But I know it's better than doing nothing."

Holmes returned her earnest gaze, a cautious but distinctly hopeful expression in his carved features. "Maggie," he said gravely, "are you absolutely certain you want to do this?"

In reply, she reached out her hand and placed it just over his own slender, insubstantial one. "We _need_ to do this."

The detective's eyes shone with a steely glitter. "So be it."

* * *

Screeching to a halt in the employees' parking lot outside the school, Maggie switched off the engine and scrambled out of the Nova. After first looking around to make certain no one was watching, she quickly ran around to the other side and opened the passenger door.

As Holmes climbed out and stood beside her, towering a foot over her head, she looked around in amazement. No less than half a dozen police cars were competing for space in the small parking lot, and several officers were hovering nearby, talking to school employees. Just outside the entrance, a group of people stood huddled together in intense conversation. Maggie saw Holly, the receptionist, among them, along with a pair of policemen and a harried couple she recognized as Andrew's mother and stepfather.

As they drew closer, Holly caught her eye and waved her frantically over, her orange fingernails slashing the autumn air. "Maggie, what the hell happened to you?" she demanded in a shrill voice. "You just took off!"

"Sorry," she said as she hurried over to join her, Holmes at her heels. For once she had prepared for such a contingency and had come up with a suitably feasable excuse. "I left my cell phone at home, and I figured I'd better have it on me in case there was any news." She turned to find that the couple standing next to Holly were looking at her in confusion. "Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder? I'm Maggie Hill. I'm Mrs. Bellows' aide. We met at Parents' Open House Night."

They blinked at her dazedly for a moment, understandably distracted. "Oh, yes," the husband said vaguely.

"Maggie Hill?" said an astonished voice somewhere behind her.

The redhead whirled around in the direction of the voice, but Holmes was blocking her view. Frowning, she edged around him, and nearly tripped over her own feet in surprise. Standing next to a black BMW, a slim notebook in his hand, was a tall man with blond hair and a dark suit which seemed just barely to contain his broad shoulders. It was, she realized, the very same police officer who had unwittingly assisted Sherlock Holmes in his first case in over a hundred years.

And he was staring at her openly.

"Lieutenant..." _Crud, what was his name?_ Maggie thought desperately, cudgelling her brains.

"Aldridge," said Holmes helpfully.

"Aldridge!" she blurted.

The man strode up to meet her, crushing her hand in greeting. She was mildly taken aback to note that he was even taller than Holmes. "I knew that name sounded familiar, but I guess I just didn't connect it with you," he said. "It's good to see you again, Miss Hill. Though," he added in a low voice, "I wish the circumstances were better."

"Hang on, you know each other?"

Maggie glanced over at Holly, who was watching the exchange with unconcealed curiosity. "Yes," she said distractedly. She was trying to figure out how she was going to pull this off. She wasn't exactly a police officer herself. She wasn't even working with them. How was she going to convince them to let her help? "Sort of. We — I mean, _I_ kind of helped the lieutenant stop a burglary."

"Kind of?" Aldridge repeated dubiously. "Miss Hill is being modest. Actually, she's the one who stopped the burglary. I only did the dirty work."

The Schroeders had begun to listen in as well at this point. "Oh, well..." Maggie cast a pleading glance at Holmes, and she imagined that everyone was wondering what she was glancing pleadingly at. The detective nodded firmly, his gray eyes flinty with resolve. It was now or never.

Maggie turned back to the group and took a deep breath.

"You see," she said slowly, "I'm a bit of an amateur detective."

* * *

**I know, right? Sooner or later, everyone bends to Sherlock Holmes' will. To Maggie's credit, she did last a whole month. I doubt if I could have refused him for more than a few days. Oh, by the way, kudos to anyone who recognized the book she was reading at the beginning of the chapter. Again, God, I am so sorry for the delay. What can I say, except... I'm a slacker and a tool. But I lay this latest chapter at your feet as a peace offering. Do with it what you will. I am at your mercy.**

**-Bixby the Self-Confessed Dingbat**


	9. There, But for the Grace of God

**Oh good Lord and lots else besides. I am not what you would call an emotional person. But I have to admit, your reviews for my last chapter turned me into such a **_**girl**_**. I had expected to find my inbox full of understandably indignant messages demanding to know where the heck I've been this whole time. I was prepared for it; I deserved it. But there wasn't an angry review to be found. Just a bunch of surprised but happy people, genuinely and heartily welcoming me back. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Sherlockians are among the sweetest, most loyal people I've ever come across; I'd venture to say that they've all got a touch of Watson in them. And Watson was never one to hold a grudge. So I should have known you wouldn't, either.**

**Anyway. I just wanted to tell you, my dear faithful readers, how much it means to me to be welcomed back as a regular member of the Irregulars. OH! And before I forget, way to go, Pompey, for recognizing 'A Wrinkle in Time' as the book Maggie was reading in the last chapter! I love that book. And now, on to chapter eight!**

**Disclaimer: Well, really! Everyone knows that if I owned the rights to Sherlock Holmes, I would make this story into a movie.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Eight, or There, But for the Grace of God

There was a short, baffled silence. Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder began to regard this diminutive young person with the overwhelming mane of red curls with considerably more interest than they had done previously. Lieutenant Aldridge could not quite seem to suppress a knowing smile, suggesting he had suspected something along these lines all along.

And then Holly just _had_ to laugh.

"No, you're not!" she exclaimed, rather loudly.

Maggie's first impulse was to shove the receptionist forcefully on the arm, while simultaneously inquiring as to where the hell she got off. But aside from effectively earning Holmes' complete disapproval, she knew it would do little for her already dubious credibility, and there was no time for debate.

Instead, she shot a glance at Holmes. It was a brief look, which went unnoticed by present company, but it was enough to communicate to the detective everything he needed to know. What the look amounted to, in a word, was _"Help."_

"Not to worry," he said in his quietly commanding way. "Repeat everything as I convey it to you. Remain calm, and above all, show absolute conviction in your words."

Maggie nodded minutely. She cleared her throat and began to speak, Holmes murmuring sentences into her ear. "This will probably sound strange to you," she said, forcing herself to maintain a calm, even tone, "but I have a kind of knack for noticing things. For a while, it was more of a hobby than anything else, but eventually I realized that I could use it to help people. As Lieutenant Aldridge can confirm, that is precisely what I have been doing."

The lieutenant said nothing. Maggie wasn't sure if this meant he was listening attentively, or if he was debating whether or not she was barking mad.

She pressed on anyway, trying her best to channel Holmes' understated confidence. "I know I don't have much experience, but I fully believe I can be of help to you, as well. Therefore I wish to offer my services, such as they are, in finding your son."

She suppressed a wince, wishing she had rephrased that last remark. _'Therefore?'_ she thought wryly. _Come on, who talks like that in this century?_

Fortunately, her verbal anachronism did not elicit any comments. Unfortunately, however, the rest of her speech did. Even as she was talking, she saw Lieutenant Aldridge shaking his head. "No way," he said firmly. "We're dealing with an escaped convict here. You may be pretty sharp, but you're still a civilian. I'm sorry."

Holmes snorted in disgust. "How very typical. To a member of the official force, a badge carries more authority than genuine competence."

Maggie thought it best not to repeat _that_. She decided it was time to put in her own two cents. "Look, no offense, but my being a civilian is really immaterial. The FBI hires civilian consultants all the time. Why should the police be any different? Besides," she continued, before the lieutenant could interrupt, "it's not like Townsend is especially dangerous. He was imprisoned for embezzlement."

Aldridge frowned. "That's not really the point."

"No, it's not the point," she countered. "The point is, Andrew is my student. I _want_ to find him, because I _care_ about him."

At this point she became aware that Mrs. Schroeder was staring at her with a strangely intent expression on her troubled face. Maggie returned her gaze, mildly alarmed.

"What," the woman said slowly, "did you say your name was?"

Maggie opened her mouth to reply, but Holmes held up a hand to silence her. "Magnolia Hill," he declared, as if he were announcing her at a debutante ball.

She barely managed to stop herself from blurting out a very indignant _"What!?"_ The detective must have noticed her bewilderment, because he explained: "Your full name is unusual, and as such is much more memorable." He lowered his voice and added, "Trust me. I did not choose to be known as Sherlock Holmes because I had any special fondness for the name."

That was enough for her. She raised her head and, with as much cool professionalism as she could muster, answered, "My name is Magnolia Hill."

Maggie watched, incredulously, as the words seemed to perform some sort of magic on the woman. She turned to her husband, who had been observing the proceedings with a pensive look on his face, and laid a hand on his arm. "Honey," she said simply. He nodded silently.

Mrs. Schroeder returned his nod, turned back to Maggie, and took a step forward. "We would like to hire you," she said.

Lieutenant Aldridge sighed. "Oh, for the love of God..."

Holly shook her head. "This is crazy. Who do you think you are, Maggie? Sherlock Holmes?"

A sharp bark of ironic laughter burst from Holmes' lips, and it was all Maggie could do to keep a straight face. "Not quite," she replied.

"All right, all right," said Aldridge impatiently, "I can see I'm on the losing side here. Well, if you're going to be working with us, we might as well not waste any more time."

"My thoughts precisely," agreed Maggie. She turned to Holly, who was still regarding her rather dubiously. "Holly, I need you to tell me everything you can remember about..." She paused. "Mrs. Schroeder, what's your ex-husband's name?"

"Patrick."

"About Patrick Townsend. His appearance, his voice, anything that could be helpful in identifying him."

"An excellent starting point," murmured Holmes beside her.

"Let's see." The receptionist tapped her orange fingernails against her chin in thought. "He was about six feet tall. Pretty thin, but not scrawny. He had light brown hair that was receding from his temples. His eyes were blue, and he wore rimless glasses. His clothes were pretty boring; just a gray T-shirt and jeans. His voice was kind of nasal. Oh, and he fidgeted with his hands a lot."

Holmes was pacing restlessly back and forth during Holly's description, clearly dissatisfied. "I fear we shall not get very far on such vague information," he muttered.

"Anything else?" Maggie pressed. "The smallest detail may be important."

She noticed Holmes smiling privately at her remark. But Holly frowned and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I can't think of anything else."

Suddenly Holmes put a hand on Maggie's arm — or rather attempted to do so, only it have it pass straight through it. "Ask her if she noticed any scent on the man," he said.

Maggie felt her eyebrows climb toward her hairline at this, but she asked the question anyway. Holly started to shake her head again, but stopped. "Yes," she said slowly. "Now that you mention it. He smelled kind of funny. Not _bad_, just strange. Like licorice, only it wasn't. I don't know what it was."

"Cloves," Mrs. Schroeder blurted.

The others turned to her in surprise. "Deborah?" her husband prompted.

She was nodding vigorously. "Yeah. Cloves. Patrick was constantly chewing this nasty clove-flavored gum. He went around the house smelling like a cured ham. It was disgusting, Alan." She went on hurriedly, eager to put the memory out of her head. "But I remember him complaining about how hard it was to find. They only sold it in those old-timey apothecary shops that sell stuff like root beer barrels and rock candy. That kind of thing. He's always been a huge history buff."

Holmes rubbed his hands together in delight. "Come, this is certainly very gratifying," he said. "The next logical step, of course, must be to track down the apothecaries which sell this particular product and question the shopkeepers as to whether or not they have sold anything to a man matching Townsend's description. It would narrow our search considerably if we knew which shops were the nearest distance to the school."

Maggie looked up at Aldridge, who was looking pensively off into space. She cleared her throat softly, and he turned his blue eyes on her. "Might I suggest a possible avenue of inquiry?" she asked politely.

* * *

The sleek black BMW 550 cruised smoothly down Pennsylvania Avenue, in the direction of Lexington Market. Aldridge sat silently behind the wheel, presumably contemplating the wisdom of allowing a twenty-four-year-old teacher's aide to tag along on a police investigation. Riding shotgun beside him was another officer, a wiry dark-haired man who had introduced himself as Sergeant Travis Wade, and was now typing assiduously on a small notebook computer. He was, he had explained in a pleasantly gravelly voice, assembling a list of possible shops in the downtown Baltimore area which sold the rare preferred chewing gum of their quarry.

Maggie sat in the back of the sedan, crammed behind the driver's seat, which was adjusted to accommodate the lieutenant's ridiculously long frame. Beside her sat Holmes, his fingers tented and his thick black eyebrows knitted in that very Holmesian way. There was a light in his eyes she had never seen before. It was the thrill of the chase, and it was extremely infectious.

In fact, she was finding it very hard to keep from grinning like an idiot.

To distract herself from the detective's enthusiasm, she leaned forward. "Nice wheels, lieutenant," she said in sincere praise. "You had a squad car when I met you, didn't you?"

He looked at her in mild surprise through the rear-view mirror. "It was borrowed," he replied. He paused, then added with a self-deprecating smile, "Scarlett was in the shop."

"Scarlett?" she echoed.

Beside him, Sergeant Wade sighed. "He named his car."

"Ah." She mulled over this for a moment. "Wouldn't that name make more sense if the car was _red_?"

"He named it after Scarlett Johansson," explained Wade.

"Wow," Maggie said simply.

"All right, that's quite enough commentary from the unofficial division," said Aldridge irritably.

"Maybe I should name my car Sherlock," Maggie remarked in amusement.

That was enough to bring Holmes out of his reverie. "If you christen that unsightly contraption after me, I shall never accompany you in it again," he growled.

She smiled reassuringly at the detective. "So where are we headed first, gentlemen?" she asked.

Wade tilted his notebook computer to allow her to see the screen. It showed an enlarged map of downtown Baltimore, specifically the historical district. Scattered across the map was a handful of little red markers. "Two-twenty West Mulberry Street," he said. "The creatively named Ye Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe. With an 'E'." He rolled his dark eyes. "It's in a centralized location, close to the elementary school, and it carries, among other nostalgic confections, the disgusting gum we're looking for."

"Sounds promising."

"If you say so, Miss Hill."

Maggie suppressed a smile as she sat back in her seat. She pulled a small notepad out of her voluminous purse and, after writing a few words on it, surreptitiously held it out toward Holmes. He leaned over and read it: _'Any theories yet?'_

"I have several," he told her, "but I am not prepared to devote my attentions to any of them quite yet. We have so little data...." He trailed off, and his eyes grew distant as he stared out the window.

She scribbled in the notepad again and tapped on it with her pen. Holmes turned back toward her and smiled faintly at what she had written: _'I have faith in you.'_

* * *

Ye Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe proved to be as ludicrous as its moniker implied. However, despite Maggie's optimism at its proximity to the school, none of its employees recognized the picture of Patrick Townsend; for that matter, none of them could remember selling clove chewing gum to anyone in the past month. Evidently it was not among their best sellers.

They had no more luck at the next three other shops they visited. It appeared there was little to no market for the product in question, for no one could recall selling it recently. Maggie was beginning to get a stiff neck from being wedged in the back seat of Aldridge's car. She was also fairly weak with hunger.

As the BMW pulled up in front of the fifth shop, Chase and Kelley's Apothecary, Maggie half-fell out onto the sidewalk and looked up at the storefront. The sign hanging above the door was wrought in black iron, and as they stepped inside, she saw that the shop was heaving with history. The floor, despite looking about a hundred years old, was polished oak. The shelves, which reached from floor to ceiling, were full of items she was sure her grandmother had kept in her bathroom cabinet. In one corner of the shop, she spotted an old soda fountain. She had to admit, it was kind of cool.

She followed the officers to the front counter, and a man emerged from a back room. "Good afternoon, may I help you?"

Maggie stared openly. The shopkeeper was dressed in a suit that was inescapably Victorian in its cut. In fact, his waistcoat was strikingly similar to the one Holmes wore. _Wow, he's taking this whole historical accuracy thing a little far_, she thought.

The detective, on the other hand, was nodding approvingly. "At last, someone in this century with some refinement," he remarked.

"Uhh," Aldridge was saying eloquently, "yes. I'm Lieutenant Aldridge. This is Sergeant Wade and—" He paused with a wry smile. "—and Ms. Magnolia Hill."

"A pleasure to meet you," the shopkeeper replied. "I'm Simon Kelley. What can I do for you gentlemen? And lady?" he added, with a solicitous nod toward Maggie.

Wade stepped forward. "We're looking for this man." He retrieved the picture of Townsend from his inner coat pocket and passed it across to the shopkeeper. "If he had come in here, it would have been within the last five days. And he would have bought clove-flavored gum."

"Oh yes," Kelley said instantly. "I remember him quite well."

Holmes gave a wordless shout of satisfaction, which unfortunately caused Maggie to leap about eight inches into the air. The officers spun on her, and she felt her face grow hot as they regarded her much in the same way they might have regarded a madwoman.

She cleared her throat. "That's good news," she said lamely.

Aldridge eyed her carefully. "Yes," he said slowly. After a beat, he turned back to the shopkeeper. "When did he come in here?"

"Oh, let's see... It was Monday night. I remember because it was raining, and he didn't have a jacket or an umbrella. I had just made a pot of coffee, so I gave him a cup. Then he bought the gum and left. He's very pleasant," the man remarked off-hand.

"Monday night, write that down," Aldridge murmured to Wade. The sergeant nodded and pulled out a slender notebook.

Holmes was gazing thoughtfully at the shopkeeper. "Maggie," he said at length. "Did you note what he said? 'He _is_ very pleasant.' He spoke in the present tense." He leaned over the counter, scrutinizing the man with his penetrating eyes. "He is hiding something. I am quite certain of it. Ask him if Townsend has visited the shop again since Monday night."

Maggie nodded minutely. "Mr. Kelley, has this man come in here more recently?"

"No. I'm afraid not."

Was it her imagination, or was there the _tiniest_ tremor in his voice?

Letting her hand rest on the glass-topped counter, she drummed her fingers noisily on its surface. "Mr. Kelley," she said neutrally, "are you aware that it is a crime to withhold information from the police?"

Kelley blinked at her. "I can assure you, miss—"

The drumming grew louder. "It's really no use trying to lie your way out of it, Mr. Kelley. I know for a fact that Patrick Townsend has visited this shop more than once. Are you certain you want to impede our investigation? Because I'm _pretty_ sure you'd regret it."

The shopkeeper watched her incessant drumming with a tight expression. For a sickening moment, Maggie felt a stab of doubt.

"All right," he said with a sigh, which Maggie almost echoed. "He was in here today, too."

"_What?_" exclaimed Aldridge.

Kelley's shoulders slumped in defeat. "I sold him some ginger pills. His son had a stomach ache."

"Whoa, whoa! He had his _son_ with him!?"

"He used to come in here fairly frequently, before he got sent to prison. It was foolish of him to come back after he had escaped, but I couldn't bring myself to turn him away."

Aldridge was definitely not pleased. With his wavy blond hair and massive shoulders, he resembled Zeus on one of his bad days. "Mr. Kelley," he said through clenched teeth, "you _do_ know I could arrest you, this very _second_, for obstruction of justice, don't you?"

"Hold on a minute, lieutenant," Maggie cut in hastily. "I don't think Mr. Kelley had any bad motives." She looked back at the shopkeeper, and her gaze was kind. "Did you?" she asked gently.

Kelley shook his head wearily. "Patrick's a good person," he said quietly. "He got tangled up in some bad business dealings. Believe me, he's already had more than enough punishment for his crimes. He just wanted to see his son."

Holmes snorted softly. "Oh yes. It was so very noble and selfless of him to take the boy from his mother."

Maggie ignored him. "I understand your wanting to help him," she said to Kelley. "But Andrew's mother is worried half to death. If you have _any_ idea where Patrick is hiding, you have to tell us, Mr. Kelley."

He chewed his lower lip as he returned her earnest gaze. "The Westland Motel," he finally said hollowly. "Two blocks away, on Paca Street. Across from St. Mary Park."

"Let's go," Aldridge said tersely.

Sergeant Wade shook himself as if trying to wake from a dream. Holmes chuckled to himself, a distinctly devilish glint in his eye. As they turned toward the door, Maggie stopped them. "Wait! I have one more quick question."

Kelley looked up from the counter, slightly dazed. "Yes?"

She pointed to the back wall. "Can I have one of those Red Vines? I am _starving_."

* * *

In the back seat of the Beamer, Maggie chewed on a rather stale rope of red licorice as Aldridge and Wade strode purposefully toward the decidedly seedy-looking Westland Motel. Upon leaving the apothecary, the officers had called for back-up, and policemen had surrounded the building, cutting off all possible exits. Maggie had been told in no uncertain terms to stay in the car, and although Holmes was not happy with this development, it was more than fine with her. Between the adrenaline rush and her candy-induced sugar high, she felt like she might rocket through the roof of the car at any moment.

She managed to wait until the officers had disappeared into the motel, and then all at once, the dam burst. "Sherlock frigging _Holmes_, are you kidding me!?" she exclaimed in a thrill of exhilaration. "That was the most amazing thing I have ever in my life been fortunate enough to be a part of! I am _so_ proud of you!"

Holmes attempted to hold back a smile, without success. Maggie had previously remarked to herself that the detective's pale, austere face underwent a transformation when he smiled, but this was a different thing entirely. He was positively _dazzling_.

"My dear girl, it was really quite a commonplace little problem," he said nonchalantly, although that grin of his was anything but nonchalant. "From the moment we stepped inside that apothecary, I was convinced it was precisely the sort of shop which Townsend would have frequented on a regular basis. His former wife had told us earlier of his interest in history, after all. We were simply fortunate in that Mr. Kelley could not bear the burden of his secret."

"But why didn't he just lie from the start?" Maggie wondered. "Why didn't he pretend he'd never seen Townsend before at _all_?"

Holmes shrugged his gaunt shoulders. "Possibly he did not wish to appear too conspicuously unhelpful, lest we suspect him of something. Or perhaps unconsciously he truly _did_ want the truth to be uncovered. Who can say?"

"Yeah. I guess it doesn't matter much in the end." She watched as Holmes winced at her use of the word _guess_. "I'm sorry I can't get you a little closer. Apparently teacher's aides don't wield much power when it comes to police actions."

He waved a slender hand dismissively. "That is quite all right," he replied. "I am more than accustomed to watching from the wings, as it were, as the official force takes center stage." His thin lips quirked in a self-deprecating smile. "I cannot deny I am somewhat to blame. As a matter of fact, I always preferred to keep my name _out_ of the papers. Were it not for Watson, I suspect my work would be lost in obscurity forever."

"Thank God for Watson, then," Maggie said fervently.

Suddenly a group of figures emerged from the entrance of the motel, and Maggie craned her neck forward to get a better look. A tall man with thinning hair and glasses led the procession, hand-cuffed and flanked on either side by two uniformed policemen. Aldridge and Wade followed closely behind. And between them, holding tightly to Wade's hand, was Andrew Townsend.

Before she knew what she was doing, Maggie had climbed out of the car and was running toward them. Holmes followed hastily, calling her name, but she barely heard him. The boy caught sight of her, and his eyes widened. "Miss Hill?" he said uncertainly.

She skidded to a halt, her Converse sneakers screeching harshly on the concrete sidewalk. "You are in _so_ much trouble, Andrew! I am going to bury you in homework up to your ears!" She knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

He nodded, his small face pinched with fear and guilt. "I'm sorry I forged my mom's handwriting," he said, his voice quavering. "I just missed my dad."

Maggie glanced at the man in hand-cuffs. He was staring down at his feet, seemingly unable to keep his head up. Somehow, she couldn't help feeling sorry for him, and wondering if she might have acted any differently if she had been in his shoes.

"Don't worry about it, Andrew," she told the boy reassuringly. "Your mom's just going to be so glad you're safe."

Unexpectedly, Andrew buried his face in her jacket. Blinking in surprise, Maggie drew her arms around him and patted his back in what she hoped was a comforting manner. She wondered disconnectedly if any of Holmes' clients had ever expressed their gratitude like this. He definitely didn't seem like the hugging type.

After a moment, she gently disentangled herself and stood up. "Have Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder been contacted yet?" she asked Aldridge and Wade, pointedly ignoring Holmes' look of ill-concealed amusement.

"They're not far away," said Aldridge. "They should be here within minutes, if the traffic's not too bad." He eyed her for a long moment, then gave a slight nod. "Good work, Miss Hill." And he turned away and took out his cell phone, disregarding her entirely.

Wade rolled his eyes. "You'll have to forgive Justin," he told her. "He's not too crazy about the idea of a civilian upstaging him. Also, he's kind of an ass." He looked down at the boy and flinched. "Sorry."

Maggie laughed and shook her head. "It's okay, really. I don't blame him."

"I, on the other hand, am not too proud to admit when I've been bested." He shook her hand warmly. "That was first-rate detective work, Miss Hill. Where'd you pick up that kind of talent, anyway?"

She smiled. "Sherlock Holmes," she said simply.

Holmes sighed in exasperation, and Wade chuckled. "I haven't read those stories in years," he said. "Looks like I'll be going to the library tonight."

Something over her left shoulder seemed to catch his attention, and she turned to see a white Volkswagen pulling up to the curb. Before the driver could even shut off the engine, Mrs. Schroeder had climbed out of the car and was sprinting up the sidewalk toward them.

"Andrew!" she shouted.

"Mom!"

The woman enfolded her son in a fiercely protective embrace, running her fingers through his mussed hair. Maggie caught Holmes' eye, and they moved unobtrusively off to a discreet distance.

As she watched the reunion, Maggie felt inconvenient tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She blinked quickly to dispel them. "Holmes," she said under her breath, "if I could hug you..."

Holmes chuckled wryly. "I know, my girl," he replied quietly. "I know."

* * *

**Shut up. I know it's uncharacteristically heartwarming. But every writer is entitled to some gushy sentimentalism every now and then. So! This chapter was insanely enjoyable to write. How I love Holmes when he's on a case... Ahem. Anyway, hope you liked the latest installment. Do leave a review before you go, if you'd be so kind!**

**Bixby**


	10. I Am Glad to Have a Friend

**Again, I am ashamed of my appalling slacker-dom. I hadn't realized it had been so long since I'd posted a chapter. What must you guys think of me? I really am a dedicated Holmesian. I'm just an incurably lazy devil, that's all. Anyway, I'll shut up. You don't want to hear my whining, anyway.**

**So: now for something just a little unusual and **_**outré**_**: a series of five short vignettes, which together make up chapter nine.**

**Disclaimer: Holmes is the property of the estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle. Though in my mind, he really belongs to the whole world.**

* * *

The Light of Pure Reason

Chapter Nine, or I Am Glad to Have a Friend

1.

Holmes watched as the raindrops slid in meandering paths down the window in Maggie's room. In the corner, the small television flickered quietly. He had no control over it, of course, but Maggie usually left it on because she knew he enjoyed the programs about forensics. At the moment, however, it went unnoticed. Instead he glanced at the clock on the wall, for the third time in less than an hour: half-past six.

She really should have been home by now.

It was her roommate Thea Byron's custom to take food home to the rooms — _apartment_, he corrected himself — during her break from her job as assistant chef, in order to share a quick dinner with Maggie before returning to the Italian restaurant for her evening shift. Today, however, Thea had already come and gone, and Maggie still had not returned.

It was unlike her to deviate from her usual schedule. She knew very well how Holmes' mind worked, the conclusions which he was inclined to draw. He had become so accustomed to tragedy and misfortune in his line of work that he almost invariably expected the worst. She really ought to be more considerate.

Unless, of course, something _had_ happened to her. And he was unprepared to contemplate that possibility.

He glanced at the television, which was currently showing some sort of program about extracting DNA from human teeth. Under normal circumstances, Holmes' interest would have been captured completely; he could still scarcely believe the technology that now existed to aid the official force in apprehending criminals. But tonight he was distracted; he could not help but be anxious over Maggie's inexplicable delay.

"What has happened to me?" he demanded of the empty room.

It had been so vastly different when he had shared rooms with Watson. As much as he had always valued the doctor's friendship, he had also valued his privacy. There had been times when he absolutely had to be alone in order to preserve his sanity. _Holmes, you're an incurable hermit,_ Watson used to tell him with some asperity.

And yet, somehow, it had proven to be the complete opposite with young Maggie. Holmes' day was dull and colorless until she came home, and not merely because of her brightly hued outfits. He looked forward to seeing her. He enjoyed talking with her, hearing her voice, watching her various facial expressions. He, Sherlock Holmes, was irreversibly attached to her. To a woman.

It was not with any sort of romantic feeling that he regarded Maggie, of course. But there was no denying that he was fond of the girl. No doubt this was partly due to the inescapable fact that she was his one and only companion, after what had seemed to be an interminable period of solitude. Nevertheless, there was something truly refreshing about Maggie Hill. She was unlike any of the women of Holmes' past acquaintance. She was sweet-tempered, and level-headed, and had a devilishly mischievous sense of humor that resonated with his own.

She was not _merely_ a woman. She was a friend.

And she was also damnably late.

At last, just before seven o'clock, Holmes heard the familiar sound of a key being turned in the dead-bolt. To satisfy himself that it was not Thea, returning for some crucial forgotten item, he called out, "That you, Maggie?"

In the next room, a pleasantly low voice answered, "Why, yes, I believe it is me!"

The immensity of Holmes' relief was thoroughly embarrassing as he emerged from the bedroom to see Maggie bustling about in the small kitchen, putting away groceries. On the kitchen table, she had placed a large, somewhat battered cardboard box. "Here I am, signed, sealed, delivered," she said genially. "And how was your day? Not too boring, I hope?"

Holmes watched her broodingly for a moment. Along with his relief at her return had come a sudden rush of irritation at her cheerful mood. He knew it was illogical; a fact which only served to annoy him more. "My day was as eventful as one might expect for an apparition," he finally said acidly, approaching the other side of the kitchen counter.

Maggie stopped what she was doing and looked up at him with wide eyes, clearly surprised by his harsh tone. "Is something wrong, Holmes?" she asked.

"Evidently not," was his flat reply. "No doubt you have some perfectly feasable explanation as to why you are nearly two hours after your usual time."

She blinked. "I'm sorry, I didn't think my errands would take so long." Her eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement. "Wait a minute. Were you _worried_ about me?"

She spoke as if she could scarcely believe him capable of worrying about _anyone_. He sighed. "Not in the least, Maggie," he said in a dull monotone.

"Holmes..." Maggie maneuvered around the counter to stand beside him, craning her neck to meet his gaze. "I can imagine how frustrating it must be for you, not knowing where I am, and not being able to reach me. I should have been more considerate. I'm really sorry."

The detective had never been one for harboring grudges. At least, when the apology was sincere. He sighed again, shaking his head at his own pettiness. "Think nothing of it, girl," he said in what he hoped was a sufficiently placating manner.

"Does that mean I'm forgiven?"

"Against my better judgment, you are forgiven."

Maggie grinned. "Good. Because I brought you a present."

Now it was Holmes' turn to blink. "I beg your pardon?"

But she was beckoning him into the kitchen, where she had left the cardboard box on the little table. Now she opened it and began lifting out items, placing them in a row beside the box: a Bunsen burner, a retort, several beakers, a set of pipettes. Next to these she deposited a handful of brown glass bottles, each with labels on the side: Sodium Hydroxide, Silicon Dioxide, Magnesium Sulfate.

Holmes looked in amazement from the objects on the table to the girl next to him. "A chemistry set?"

Maggie laughed, obviously delighted. "Surprise! I was driving past an estate sale on the way home, so I stopped and had a look-see. And they were practically giving this away." She held up a pipette to the light and looked through it. "Isn't it great? I know technically you can't use it yourself, but you can show me what to do, and we can perform little experiments, whee!"

It was with mixed feelings that Holmes regarded this new development. On the one hand, he was touched by the gesture — more deeply touched than he cared to admit, even to himself. Maggie was so clearly eager to do things for him, to make him happy. Perhaps a little too eager.

Holmes had known very well the danger to which he would be exposing the girl in the near future, and yet he had offered little protest when she suggested a collaboration. He had been too gratified, too pleased to object. But there would be no talking her out of it now. She was far too dedicated to the idea, and to him.

And now this.

Maggie was placing a pair of test tube clamps on the table when she realized Holmes hadn't said anything. She looked up at him slowly, and her smile faded. "You don't like it," she said in disappointment.

"I do," Holmes replied quickly. "Very much. It is... quite perfect."

She frowned. "But...?"

"Girl..." He sighed in exasperation. "You are altogether too kind to me."

"What are you talking about, Holmes?" she asked, genuinely confused.

He shook his head. How could he tell her of his concern that she was giving too much of herself, that she was allowing him to take over her life completely, without a single complaint? He knew she would only deny it. She would argue that it had all been her own choice. And sadly, she would be right.

Instead, he forced himself to muster a smile. "Nothing of consequence, Maggie. It is a wonderful gesture, and I thank you." Her own smile returned. "Now," he continued briskly, rubbing his hands together, "have you any sodium carbonate there?"

She looked through the assortment of bottles. "Yep."

"And phenolphthalein?"

"Here's some."

"Excellent. In that case, I can show you an amusing little trick. Have you ever wondered, my dear, how to turn water into wine?"

Maggie chuckled. "Have I ever, Mr. Wizard! Do tell."

* * *

2.

The music in this infernal place was enough to drive a sane man to suicide. That was assuming, of course, that he wasn't already dead to begin with.

Holmes had finally come to the grudging conclusion that there was no other explanation for his current incorporeal state, and was willing to accept the fact with equanimity. But even a dead man had his limits. And the hellish noise that the proprietors of this coffee shop insisted on blaring through their sound system was too much to bear. Holmes had always prided himself on his open mind, but this was not music. It was sheer torture.

Unfortunately, Maggie had taken a liking to the oddly-named Zombie Joe's after their first visit some months ago. On being forced to return to the shop in order to replace the coffee which had adorned her motorcar, she had been pleasantly surprised by its quality. Since then she had come back a number of times, though thankfully she had not asked Holmes to accompany her.

On this particular day, however, he had been just bored and desperate enough to accept her offer to come along. To Holmes' surprise, Thea had also been invited. Usually, if Maggie left the apartment with Holmes, she did not ask her roommate to come, if only to avoid the possibility of accidentally speaking to him in her presence. The young chef already seemed to have growing doubts as to her friend's sanity.

Maggie was undoubtedly planning something. Holmes attempted to deliberate on what it might be, before ultimately giving up the idea. There were far too little data at present to be bothered with, and the music was driving him mad.

Didn't anyone listen to Sarasate in this blasted century?

He stood irritably to one side as Maggie and Thea chattered away with Niko Louverdes, the young man who appeared to be a third-generation descendant of Greek immigrants, a Catholic, an owner of a small dog, and incidentally also left-handed. He was obviously taken with Maggie, as he continued to lean farther across the counter toward her. How very subtle.

She laughed at some remark he made. "No, the kids aren't that bad. At least, none of them have made any attempts on my life yet. I'm just looking into another line of work."

"Oh, yeah? What's that?" Niko asked, drumming his fingers on the counter.

"Detective work," Maggie said with a conspiratorial glance toward Holmes.

Thea rolled her eyes. "She's gone a little crazy with her Sherlock Holmes obsession. I'm hoping it's just a phase."

"Pshh, not me!" Niko exclaimed fervently. "That's awesome! You could go around wearing a fedora like Sam Spade, calling everyone 'sweetheart' and narrating your life aloud."

Maggie laughed again. "Sorry, but I get enough strange looks from people already."

"Hey, I think you're pretty cool," he said with a smile.

Holmes observed the proceedings, along with the young man's fidgeting, with a derisive snort. "Either the lad is unduly agitated by your proximity," he remarked, "or he is under the influence of some form of stimulant."

Maggie scoffed under her breath. "You would know," she muttered.

The other two young people simultaneously stared at her. "Know what, Maggs?" Thea asked, a dark eyebrow raised quizzically.

Maggie looked as if she wished she could melt into the tile floor. "Umm, you would know, uhh... which... beans make the best espresso," she stammered.

Not the most well-executed recovery, all told.

"Right," said Niko slowly. "Well, if you're making espresso, then you want to look for arabica beans, never robusta. And make sure it's a Full City, or Italian roast." He cleared his throat delicately. "A certain massive international coffee chain which shall remain nameless invariably uses French roast, which leads to the espresso tasting burnt and kind of disgusting."

"Really?" piped Thea. "That's interesting. I didn't know the roast made such a huge difference. I thought it depended more on the way it was prepared — the temperature, and pressure, and the grind of the beans and whatnot."

"Well, it does," agreed Niko. "You're right about that. In fact..."

Apparently Maggie had heard enough. After excusing herself with a polite mumble, she trudged off to a corner table of the eerily lit coffee shop. Holmes followed her as she sat down under a luminescent picture of a group of skeletons playing poker, pulled out a textbook on private investigation, and pretended to read.

She was doing her best to glare at Holmes in disapproval, but apparently her heart was not in it, for the most it could be called was a slight contortion of the eyelids. "Do you _ever_ feel bad for making me look crazy?" she growled.

Holmes made a show of deliberating on this for a moment. "Briefly, but it passes."

Maggie sighed. Peering over the top of her textbook, she watched as Thea and Niko continued their conversation about the fascinating procedure of pouring hot water through beans. "They seem to be hitting it off pretty well." She tapped her fingertips together with a vaguely sinister air. "Eeexcellent."

Now Holmes understood why Thea had been invited along on this merry little excursion. "It is your intention that the two young people should become romantically involved, then?" he asked.

The girl shrugged. "Why not? Thea deserves someone like Niko. He's sweet, funny, intelligent... and they both love to cook." She cast a glance at Holmes, before adding, "And, if they do end up together, and Thea moves out, I won't have to ignore you anymore. It'll be a lot easier this way."

"Ah," said Holmes knowingly, arching his eyebrows, "so there is an ulterior motive to your noble errand of love."

Under the glow of the ultraviolet lamps, Maggie's grin was blinding. "Oh, wipe that smirk off your face," she said in mock reproof. Her smile faded, and she propped her chin up with her hand. "You don't know how hard it is sometimes, Holmes. I hate pretending that you don't exist."

"I know it has been difficult," he said quietly.

"No, I don't mean that." She blew out a frustrated breath. "Everyone thinks... that you're just a character in a work of fiction. I wish people knew the truth."

Holmes sighed and took a seat in the unoccupied chair beside her. "They would never believe the truth, Maggie," he said in a low voice. "Of that I am more than certain. And I hate to think what would happen to you if you tried to tell them."

She smiled wanly. "Don't worry," she murmured.

As his gaze drifted over to Thea and Niko, who indeed seemed to be developing an instant rapport, Holmes experienced a sudden rush of possessiveness toward the diminutive redhead at his side. With her natural beauty and easy-going personality, it seemed unlikely that she would remain single for much longer. It would be most unfair to deny her of any male companionship. Nor would he even have the right to do so.

All the same, if Maggie were to marry... what would become of him?

* * *

3.

Holmes was restless. Outside, it was late November, and there was a heavy rain. The bare branches of the enormous beech tree in the courtyard below scraped against the windowpanes. In the past, he would have picked up his violin, or organized his case files, or indulged himself with one of his clay pipes... or failing that, the cocaine bottle. In his insubstantial state, he felt no desire to smoke, but he at least would have preferred to be doing _something_ with his time. He felt utterly useless.

He prowled the bedroom like a caged tiger, his quick eyes darting everywhere. He glanced at Maggie, who was currently sitting on her massive four-post bed, deep in her textbook. She was taking a correspondence course in order to obtain her private investigator's license, and most of her free time was occupied by studying. He was somewhat resentful that she was occupied with a task while he racked his brain to pieces.

Holmes had offered to help her more than once in her studies, but she'd stubbornly refused, insisting she would rather do it on her own. This had surprised him; he thought she had been merely completing a formality, since he would be doing the actual detective work.

But apparently she cared about the work, too. Odd.

Holmes started slightly as Maggie's pencil was suddenly hurled across the room. The girl was groaning and rubbing her eyes. "Enough studying," she said decisively. "I need a beer."

He concealed his amusement as the girl marched past him out of the room, heading straight for the kitchen. As he continued his nervous pacing, he noticed that Maggie had left her textbook lying open on the bed. Curious to see what she was studying at the moment, he leaned over and peered at it.

The chapter appeared to be dealing with the Maryland judicial system. Little wonder that Maggie become frustrated, he reflected with a wry smile. Though it was crucial to possess a practical knowledge of the law, there were times when it was as much a hindrance as a help to the independent investigator. Hence Holmes' regrettable but often unavoidable tendency to act as his own police.

In fact, the more he dwelt on it, it was really quite surprising that he had never been arrested.

As he perused through the paragraphs, his gaze lighted on something which had been scribbled in the margin toward the bottom of the page. It was a short sentence, in Maggie's small, neat hand:

_"Danger is part of my trade."_

The sight of that brief notation startled Holmes. He could hear it in his head, being spoken in his own voice. He remembered uttering those exact words to Professor Moriarty in his rooms at Baker Street. He could recall with perfect clarity where he had been standing as he had uttered them: beside the breakfast table, his hand within reach of his pistol, haughty and defiant in the face of pure malignant evil. It was so long ago, and yet the moment was forever etched into his memory.

Of course, Maggie knew all that very well. She also knew precisely what had happened to Holmes shortly after that interview.

_Could she be having second thoughts?_ he wondered.

He stepped back quickly from the bed as Maggie returned, beer in hand. She raised the bottle toward him with a smile. "Cheers," she said tiredly.

Holmes' eyes followed her closely as she yawned and flopped down on her bed once more, retrieving a tattered paperback out from beneath her pillow. She took a sip of her beer and began to read, serenely oblivious to his inner turmoil.

He paused for a moment in indecision, then approached the foot of her bed. "Maggie," he began.

She looked up at him. "Yeah, Holmes?"

Holmes wanted to tell her that she did not have to go through with this. That he would understand if she had changed her mind. That she was young and vibrant and full of promise, and he did not want her to throw away her life for a dead man.

But he could not say it.

He cleared his throat, mentally berating himself. "What is it that you are reading?"

In response, she held up the book. "P.G. Wodehouse. My favorite Brit. After you, of course," she added with a grin. "I've been reading far too much about criminal behavior lately. I needed something a little more cheerful. The worst that happens in Wodehouse's stories is the occasional cow creamer or policeman's helmet getting pinched."

"Ah." Holmes was hardly listening. What was the matter with him? How could he be so selfish?

Maggie noticed him gazing at her, or rather _through_ her, and smiled. "I can read it aloud, if you like," she suggested mildly.

It took a few seconds for her offer to register in Holmes' mind. "Oh, no," he said quickly. "That is, I would not presume..." On second thought, it would serve to distract him. Anything had to be better than this insufferable self-recrimination.

"Unless..." He hesitated. "Unless you are offering."

She chuckled. "You must _really_ be bored." She patted the mattress. "Come on up here and sit a spell."

Suppressing a sigh, Holmes sat down beside her on the enormous bed and stretched out his long frame. He couldn't help but smile as Maggie cleared her throat with much ceremony and began reading aloud in a surprisingly convincing facsimile of an stiflingly upper-class English accent.

"_'Now, touching this business of old Jeeves — my man, you know,'_" she read aloud, "_'how do we stand? Lots of people think I'm much too dependent on him. My aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man's a genius. From the collar upward he stands alone....'_"

As Maggie read, Holmes watched her lips move, and then her green eyes as they followed the words on the page.

He wondered if she knew just how much she had given up for him.

* * *

4.

The man was in his late forties. A retired military man of some sort; a sergeant of the United States Army, perhaps. A widower, obviously, with two children, both girls. Though now, it seemed, he was attempting to win the affections of a woman much younger than himself.

Those were the main points Holmes deduced about the man he happened to spot as he emerged from the grocery store and out into the parking lot where Maggie had parked her own unsightly motorcar. That, and the obvious fact that the man was near-sighted, but too vain to wear his spectacles.

The actual process of turning the observations into deductions took him a mere matter of seconds. Nonetheless, it was a welcome exercise for his mental powers, which tended to stagnate if they were not put to regular use. A month ago, Maggie had suggested that they come here on a regular basis, to keep his mind sharp, and he was grateful for it. But the one thing he regretted about his companion was that she caught on to his methods rather quickly, and therefore was seldom surprised or impressed by his feats of logic. Regrettable. He would have given a great deal to hear one of Watson's exclamations of amazement just once.

Good old fellow. He could always count on him. He hoped that his friend had not mourned his death for too long. At least the poor chap had had his wife to comfort him. Mary had been a good woman, better than most. She would have taken care of Watson.

Holmes was brought out of his reminiscences by a sigh from the driver's seat. He looked over at Maggie, who was filling out an application for her private investigator's license. "Having difficulties, are we?" he asked.

She shook her head, red curls flying every which way. "Not especially," she replied. "There are just way too many questions. Like this one. Listen to this." She pointed to a line on the application. "'Have you ever been confined or committed to a mental institution or hospital for treatment or observation for a mental or psychiatric condition on a temporary or permanent basis?'" She laughed. "That's a lot of _or_'s. Guess they're trying to cover their bases."

"Well, have you or have you not?" he jested.

"Hush."

Holmes chuckled as he sat back in the passenger seat and continued his observations. A teenage mother still in school walked slowly though his field of vision, and he shook his head to himself. Technology may have made an astounding leap over the past century, but society's morals had certainly taken a painful step backward.

"'Are you addicted to or have you ever been addicted to controlled dangerous substances?'" Maggie humphed. "Good thing _you're_ not filling this out."

The detective gave her a hard look, which she pointedly ignored. She had made it no secret that she disapproved of his former cocaine habit. He could understand her viewpoint, but he rather wished she would let it go.

"Wuh-oh. 'Will your agency have any employees? If so, print his or her name or names below.'" Maggie wielded her pen and bent forward over the application. "Sher... lock... Holmes..."

"Maggie!"

"I'm kidding, I left it blank," she said, laughing. "Looks like I'll be lying indirectly to the U.S. government. Oh well, can't be helped."

Holmes tried in vain to suppress a smile. If the idea were not so far-fetched, he might have suspected the girl of being one of Watson's descendants. They certainly seemed to share the same pawky humor.

He was just attempting to satisfy himself as to whether the woman who was getting out of the car adjescent to them was a vegetarian out of necessity or personal choice, when Maggie broke into his thoughts once again: "Hey, what's your middle name?"

The corner of his lips twitched. "Sherlock."

Maggie turned to him. "Your name is Sherlock Sherlock Holmes?" she asked dubiously.

"My dear girl, pray don't be facetious," he said sententiously. "You know perfectly well what I meant."

"Yes, I know." She chuckled. "So if your middle name is Sherlock, then what's your first name?"

Holmes smiled faintly. Even Watson had never asked him that question. "William," he replied.

"Really?" Maggie looked somewhat surprised. "William Sherlock Holmes," she said slowly, as if trying to decide whether she liked it.

"Actually," he amended, for he preferred accuracy whenever possible, "I was christened William Sherlock Scott Holmes."

Maggie grinned. "That's quite a mouthful."

"Indeed," he said dryly. "However, you see why I chose to be known by my unfortunate soubriquet. William Holmes is simply too commonplace."

"No, he isn't."

He smiled. "And you, Maggie?" he asked. "I don't believe I ever learnt your middle name."

Abruptly, the girl's gaze returned to the application form in her hands. "Well... that's because I don't have one," she said evenly.

"No middle name?" Holmes frowned. "Dear me, that is certainly very unusual. Why is that?"

Maggie sighed in irritation. "Because I was never given one," she said, suddenly very terse. "New subject, please."

But Holmes could not simply allow such a singular point to be dropped so quickly. "How is it that you were never given a middle name?" he had to know. "Maggie..." He leaned forward in his seat and regarded her intently. "Why is it that you never speak of your family?"

Her green eyes flashed at him. "Why don't you speak of yours?" she shot back.

_Touché,_ thought Holmes, but did not give voice to it. Instead, he tried to appeal to her innate common sense, which had secretly always impressed him. "Come now, Maggie," he said kindly. "Is it not possible that you could be exaggerating slightly in your opinion of them? Surely they are not as terrible as you seem to think."

The haunted expression on her face disturbed him more than he cared to admit. He could not recall her looking so... unlike herself. "You don't know them, Holmes," she said quietly. "And yes. They are."

Holmes sat back in silence as she returned to her application. Not for the first time, he suspected that something truly dreadful had been done to his young friend in the past.

And for the first time, he was uncertain whether he really wanted to know.

* * *

5.

Holmes had already been aware that he was somewhat well-known in this century. There seemed to be no end to the cultural references pertaining to him. Scores of actors through the decades had played him on the stage, on the radio, in the cinema, or on television. Some of them were decent — Rathbone and Brett came to mind — and others completely laughable. Nearly all of them portrayed him with a perfectly ludicrous hat.

And then there were the other references. _Elementary_ was a word which apparently belonged exclusively to him, though he could not remember uttering it all that often. _The Great Detective_ was another phrase which had been coined for him alone. And to his private amusement, a common synonym for a detective was a "Sherlock". If Lestrade had ever found out that little tidbit, he more than likely would have choked on his own rage.

But until now, he had never suspected that his own humble name would be the final question on _Jeopardy!_

_Truly this is fame,_ he thought with an ironic smile.

He sat on the sofa, for once not confined to Maggie's room. Thea was out and would not return until later that night; she had gone to dinner and a movie with young Niko Louverdes. It was a pleasant change, spending the evening alone with Maggie, not worrying whether her roommate would catch her talking to thin air. Holmes often wondered if Thea had ever made any connection between Maggie's odd behavior and the acquisition of his old magnifying lens. If he were in her place, he would certainly not have dismissed it merely as coincidence.

It mattered little in the end. Thea, while quite a pleasant young lady, was not exceptionally bright. Thank goodness that Maggie had a good head on her shoulders. He had grave misgivings as to whether he could tolerate living with a woman who had fluff for brains.

Speaking of which, some brainless game show was on now, in which contestants had to guess letters to spell out a word or phrase. Abruptly Holmes remembered he had wanted to watch a program about the infamous Shanghai Tunnels of Portland, Oregon. But it was airing on a different station. To his annoyance, he was unable to change the channel.

What the deuce was taking Maggie, anyhow? She had retreated to the bathroom earlier to take a shower, but that had been some time ago. Surely she was finished by now.

He stood up and strode down the hall to the bathroom door. The sound of water had stopped, and all seemed to be quiet inside. He lifted his hand to rap on the door, then caught himself at the last second, chastising himself for his blunder.

Instead he cleared his throat. "Maggie?" he called in a clear voice.

There was no answer. He frowned, and called her name a little louder. Still, there was no answering voice from the other side of the door. Peculiar.

"Maggie!" he shouted.

When there was still no response, Holmes began to grow concerned. Perhaps she was ill. She had not looked especially well when she had returned home from the elementary school. Was it conceivable that she might have fainted?

Holmes did not care to find out. Nor did he care to violate her privacy by coming in without her permission. But if she was ill or injured, he certainly could not ignore her.

Hoping she would forgive him if he was proven wrong, he steeled himself and walked through the closed door into the little bathroom beyond.

And then he froze.

Perched on the toilet, clad in only a towel, Maggie sat bent over with her back facing him, painting the toenails of her left foot, which was resting on the edge of the bathtub. Her long hair was pulled up into a loose twist, and the earphones of her little portable music player were jammed into her ears. She was humming along softly to herself.

But that was not what had caused Holmes to stop in his tracks. All over Maggie's upper back, and extending under the towel, ran a series of long, shiny scars on her otherwise smooth white skin.

"Dear God, Maggie," he said hoarsely.

She twisted around and placed her foot on the floor, and as she did so, her gaze fell on him. "_Holmes!_" she cried in indignation. "What the f... flying buttress are you doing in here!? Get out!"

Holmes couldn't seem to bring himself to move. Angrily, Maggie stood up and yanked out her earphones. "Are you deaf?" she snapped. "I thought we had an agreement, Holmes! Now get out!"

Hardly aware of what he was doing, he moved slowly forward, his hand reaching toward her scarred back. "Who did this do you?" he asked softly.

Maggie glared at him. "I don't want to talk about it." She edged around him, threw the door open on its hinges, and stalked out of the bathroom.

But Holmes would not be swayed. He followed close behind her down the hall, examining the scars as objectively and impersonally as he could. "Those marks are old," he said. "A decade old, at least; perhaps older. You would have been only a child."

_A child. Just an innocent child._

"Was it your father?" he pressed urgently. "Is that why you never speak of him? Did he do this to you?"

She growled in vexation. "I _said_ I don't want—"

"To talk about it," he said impatiently. "Yes, I know. But would it not be wiser to tell me?"

Maggie shot him a look of disbelief. "Why?" she demanded.

"Well..." Holmes hesitated. "You might... feel better. The benefit of confiding in another, of... relieving yourself of a burden—"

The girl scoffed in disdain. "Yeah, right," she said bitterly. "Don't give me that. Be honest, Holmes. You don't care about any of that. You just can't stand not _knowing_."

Before she could retreat to her bedroom, Holmes quickly stepped in front of her, cutting her off. He drew himself up to his full height and spoke in a low, cold voice. "Do not make the mistake of assuming that my regard for my fellow men — and yes, _women_ — is motivated by mere intellectual stimulation. I did not endure days at a stretch without sleep and sustenance, did not put myself in mortal danger, and did _not_, for that matter, give my very _life_ simply to satisfy my curiosity. If that had been all I desired, I would have become a chemist. I did what I did because I believed that all of humankind has the right to feel that justice is being served, and I shall continue to believe it. So _kindly_ do not imply that I don't care."

For a moment, Holmes feared he had said too much. Maggie seemed unable to meet his eyes. Instead, she stared at a fixed spot on his waistcoat.

"I'm sorry," she finally whispered.

He sighed and shook his head. "Go and get dressed," he said hollowly.

Maggie nodded silently, and turned and padded softly to her bedroom, giving him another view of her ravaged back. Holmes shut his eyes to block out the sight.

Several moments later, the door opened again, and Maggie slowly emerged in a gray shirt and a pair of faded trousers, in contrast to her usually colorful clothing. She came forward, until she was only an arm's-length away from Holmes. She was so very small.

"Watson got you all wrong, you know," she said.

"What do you mean?" he inquired quietly.

"A brain without a heart. That's what he called you." She smiled sadly. "I wonder what he could have been thinking."

"Maggie..."

"Please, Holmes." Her voice suddenly broke. "Please, don't make me tell you."

Holmes stepped close to her, wishing he could pat her hand, or stroke her hair, or do _something_ to comfort her. "Shh, it's all right," he murmured, as soothingly as he knew how. "If you do not wish to tell me, then I will not press the matter. I've no desire to cause you grief. Not to you, my girl." He cleared his throat. "My friend."

Maggie raised her head and gave him a watery smile. "Thank you, Holmes."

She stood on her toes and kissed the air next to his cheek. As she turned away, leaving him to wonder why she would do such a thing, she stopped. "I will tell you one thing."

It took a moment for Holmes to find his voice. "Yes?"

"It wasn't my father."

There was a long pause, and Holmes wondered if that was all she would say. And then she spoke again, in a low voice.

"It was my mother."

* * *

**Aaaand we end on a downer. Wow, that was long. At least, it seemed long to me. Anywho, how'd everyone like it? I know it was a somewhat different format than usual, but I like experimenting with my narration. Well, my fingers are sore from typing, so I will bid you adieu. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. :)**

**- Bixby**

**P.S. I may be a dork, but for some reason I find the idea of Holmes watching **_**Jeopardy!**_** to be endlessly amusing.**


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